Aitch
by CaptainPop
Summary: Sam runs into a strange apartment, meets a random person who does not seem surprised by her appearance and becomes interested in a new direction for her life and some new changes in her personal life, too.
1. Chapter 1

Aitch sighed into his left palm as it supported the weight of his head, resting his elbow on the kitchen island counter with tired, half closed eyes. The smell of fresh brewed Colombian coffee filled his nostrils from the coffeemaker next to him and the cup of black liquid steaming in his right fist. Opposite him, in the wide open livingroom, the big screen plasma television nattered on about local Seattle news events of the day. He only half listened to it as his bleary eyes tried to wake up.

He was bent over the island counter in a pair of black pajama pants with little AC/DC band logos all over it. Maybe he needed to play some Back in Black to wake himself up. The coffee was not much help.

Behind him sizzled the strips of bacon and sausages in two frying pans on the stove top. The overhead fan whirred annoyingly to vent out the smoke. Maybe some meat in his gut would give him the energy to start the day.

There was some faint commotion in the hallway outside the apartment door and a rapid fire hammering on the door.

Aitch cast a tired glance at the door, sighed again and shuffled over to the door, drinking hot black java from his mug as he went. The hammering was getting insistent by the time he reached the door, twisted the bolt lock and twisted the knob.

The door burst open and something short and blond in a faded green vest and short khaki half-pants pushed past him and into his apartment, yelling: "Hide me!!"

"Won't you come in," Aitch deadpanned, slowly closing the door and turning to face his visitor, leaning on the doorknob.

The teen looked panicked and frantic. She stared at Aitch and/or the door.

There was a knock at the door. "Seattle Police!"

The teen seemed to get more agitated.

Aitch motioned with his coffee cup for the strange girl to go down the hallway to her right, past the television, out of sight. She seemed to understand and ran into hiding. He opened the door to two rather exhausted beat cops, both breathing heavy as if having chased someone up several floors. He blocked their entry to his home.

"Isn't it kinda early in the morning to be banging on doors?" Aitch said, tiredly, sipping from his mug.

The first cop, a big guy with broad shoulders and an angry face, glared at him. "It's five at night."

"Isn't it kinda early in the evening to be banging on doors?" Aitch modified, taking another drink while staring at the two beat cops with neutral, disinterested eyes.

"Did a blond kid run in here?" the second cop, a thinner and younger version of the first cop said, between gasps.

"You mean through this door that I just opened for you?" Aitch asked, rhetorically.

"Yeah."

"No."

The first cop asked, with a touch of skepticism: "You sure?"

"Well, it's hard to tell, what with all the other kids running in and out of this place," Aitch answered, perhaps a tad sarcastically. "Whoops! There goes one now..."

They stared at each other a moment in silence and it was obvious that these two beat cops did not share in his sense of humor. "Do you mind if we have a look inside?"

"The maid hasn't tidied, so I'm not really ready to receive visitors," Aitch smiled. Well, tried to smile but he was really too tired for this. "Perhaps another time."

As he tried to close the door, the younger cop put out his arm and his hand stopped the door. "Are you hiding something?"

"Just my love of old show tunes." Aitch nodded at the cops hand on his door. "Mind?"

"Hiding a fugitive is a crime," the first cop said, plainly.

Aitch smiled again, this time a bit more pleasantly. "I liked the fugitive. Harrison Ford was very convincing. Okay, bye-bye." And he closed the door, leaving two boggled beat cops boggling in the hallway.

He went back to his perch in the kitchen, checking on the sizzling bacon and sausages which were almost done. He leaned on his left palm and stared at the television screen.

The strange blond slowly emerged from the hallway that led to the bathroom and two bedrooms, cautiously eying the door. She looked over at Aitch leaning on the island in the kitchen. "Thanks, dude. You saved my life."

"My first good deed of the morning," Aitch mumbled.

"Uh, it's night time, dude," the blond corrected.

Aitch looked at the blond in his livingroom and sighed. "I give up."

She moved for the door, seeming to be about to leave. "Ok, I'm outtie."

"They're still out there, blonderella." He thought that was rather obvious, but felt he should say it, never the less. "Might want to give it a few minutes for them to get tired and wander away."

The blond seemed to be sizing him up. Probably judging if he was a threat to her. "You're not a murdering child rapist or something, are ya?"

"Not today," he sighed, the excitement of the moment having left him. "Hungry?"

The blond sniffed the air. "Is that bacon?"

"And sausage. Want some?"

Like a starving animal, the blond made her way over to the other side of the counter. "Just for future reference, that is a dumb question." She grinned at him.

Aitch raised an eyebrow at his visitor.

"Mama loves her meat!"

Shaking his head, he took out two plates and loaded crispy strips of bacon and sausages on them, setting one in front of his blond guest and one before him. He fished a mug out of the cupboard and put it on the counter by her plate. "Hope you like black coffee. It's all I got."

The blond was already into her bacon before he even touched the first strip.

"Do you ever chew?" he asked, nonchalantly.

The blond opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue to display half chewed smoked pig. "Mlah!"

"That's attractive," Aitch deadpanned and bit into a sausage.

"So," the blond began between strips of bacon. "I suppose you wanna know why the cops were chasing me..."

Aitch started in on his bacon. "Not really, no."

Blonderella stared at the pajama clad man for a moment. She shrugged and continued polishing the meat off of her plate. "Cool." She finished the last sausage and reached over to her host's plate to snatch a strip of bacon.

Aitch watched the blond's hand snake over to his plate and steal away some of his bacon, giving her an arched eyebrow.

Pausing a moment upon seeing her host's face, she said: "You know, bacon's bad for your arteries at your age. I'm saving your life, dude." She popped the bacon in her mouth and chewed.

"Guess that makes us even," Aitch chuckled.

The blond wiped her mouth with the back of her right hand and stuck it out over the counter. "Name's Sam."

Aitch took the hand and gave it a brief shake. "Aitch."

"As in the letter?"

"As in my name." He released Sam's hand and took her plate and his over to the sink. "I have to go get changed," he told her, as he headed for the bedroom down the hallway on the other side of the apartment. "Feel free to hang out."

Sam did a few casual pirouettes around the living room, stretching out her arms as she spun, wasting time as she rotated over to the sofa and plopped herself down, her legs flying up to land on the coffee table. She reached forward and grabbed the remote and started flicking through satellite channels on the 72 inch plasma on the wall.

Boy. Did she pick the right apartment. She was absently glad that Carly was out today. Although, she's not sure how the brunette would have handled the two cops. Jeeze. You throw one egg at one cop car and you'd think she was public enemy number one.


	2. A Couple Of Minutes

**Sorry for the long delay in updating. And sorry that this one is so short. I will make it up to you! Life's been a terrible Mistress. Between work, the Pyr8z! web show, family and stuff, it has been hard to keep up with my stories. But, if you keep reading, I promise to make my updates more frequent. As a side note, we are considering uniting Jennette McCurdy and Nathan Kress to split the roles in our web show. Just before summer 2010, we will start a campaign to get their fans to email, message and twitter them into giving the scripts a read. It's the fans that make things happen, you know! And now, on with our show:**

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Aitch slowly approached it.

It looked so innocent, sitting there on the mail room counter at City Hall, wrapped in brown paper. It was square, the size of a car battery and addressed to the Seattle Mayor's Office. It also failed to pass the hand held bomb sniffer that the clerk had used on it a few hours earlier.

He stood there, a yard away from the package, rubbing his goatee with his right hand and trying to think of where to begin.

He was probably an odd sight to his coworkers, who thought he was nuts anyway. All he wore was a long sleeved dress shirt, open, over an orange T-Shirt with 'Tuna Piano' on the front, faded jeans and skaters. There was no solid, heavy Kevlar bomb suit, dome head gear and restrictive armor. He wanted to be able to move freely. And, besides, whenever he finally meets the one he cannot defuse, he wants it to be quick. And the bomb suit would be little protection from a full on bomb blast.

Within the next two minutes, he had the package wrapping open and was feeling around the lid to the box for any trip wires. It looked good. He slowly lifted the lid up, off of the box, inch by inch. It was coming off freely. Another inch and it was clear of the box. He moved it to the left and set it down on the counter.

Aitch looked into the box and there it was, nestled in bubble wrap. Four glass bottles of brown liquid with sealed lids and wires running out of them to a center cube. Thick duct tape held it all together. The cube was plastic with a screw top. He took out a small Phillips screwdriver from his belt kit and started removing each of the four corner screws.

The phone on his hip sang out the ring tone "She Drives Me Crazy". He flipped it open without needing to check the Caller ID on the tiny screen, hitting the speaker button and setting the device down on the counter. "Working, Sam..." he said.

"It's quick!" Sam's voice came from the tiny speakers with a sense of hyper excitement.

Aitch sighed and removed the last screw, put away his screwdriver and began to lift the plastic lid the same way that he did the box lid. "Fine."

"It's about Carly..." Sam started, a edge of seriousness to her voice.

He paused a moment. "This won't be quick, will it?" He continued working off the lid, but it caught on something underneath it for a moment. Aitch froze for a split instant, his blood suddenly cold, expecting the worst. Then, the tug was gone and it came away easily in his hand.

Sam sighed. "Ok, maybe not. Look, do you have a minute?"

Aitch looked into the small plastic box and watched as a digital timer was counting down from two minutes. He pursed his lips. "Yeah...a couple..."


	3. Thoughts

**Well...this came quick. Not a lot of reviews, but I hope some of you like this. Trust me...it will grow into CAM.**

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**Carly was kicking her feet behind her as she laid on her bed with school books spread out around her. The biology text was propped up on a pillow and held open by her iPhone and the edge of a binder. She was busy doing the assignment in her notebook, referring to the stapled pages flipped open to her left. Her feet moved back and forth to the Black Eyed Peas that rocked in her ears from the earbuds running from her iPhone.

She paused and looked up at the digital clock on the bedside table. It was after nine o'clock at night. She gave a heavy sigh and stared back at her assignment sheet. Three hours was absolutely way too long to have spent on homework.

Carly folded her arms under her head and laid the side of her face on her forearms, staring at the clock and the picture next to it. The silver framed photograph was of Sam grinning like a lioness in a room full of meat and hugging Carly's shoulders from behind, her chin resting on Carly's left shoulder, cheek pressed to hers, Sam's arms wrapped around Carly's neck, and Carly caught in an open mouthed laugh with her hands gripping Sam's arms at her neck. It was last summer in Vancouver and Sam and Carly had just come out of the Meat Festival and Carly was laughing because Sam had become so hyper and telling every butcher that she was going to marry them.

Good times. Better times. Carefree times.

High school had been tougher than either of them had expected. The courses were harder and the pressure to succeed more intense. The teachers pounded into their young minds every day the importance of doing well with their grades, pushing the competition for university placements and demanding that each student consider their future plans. The course load was grueling and so was the crushing weight of homework they had to complete every night.

She had been seeing less and less of Sam over the past few months. Other than the iCarly rehearsals and doing the webshow, they only really saw each other at school or the occasional time spent hanging out at the Groovie Smoothie. Sam didn't come by the loft as often as she used to. Where Sam once was a fixture in her home, someone that practically lived there, she was finding that her blond friend had become strangely absent from her home and life and Carly had discovered that there was a void in her life. An empty feeling that she couldn't explain.

Most of the time, Sam had taken to visiting the man down the hall. The man named after a letter. So, she was nearby, just not hanging with Carly. He was nice, but Carly was a bit jealous that he got to have more of Sam's time. Sam had been her best friend since forever and Carly had discovered that she did not like to share.

Sure, she missed her best friend. But, it wasn't as if she was lonely. Freddy came over every other day to work on the webshow equipment or just hang out doing homework. The two of them shared almost every other class. Mostly heavy on the English and Social courses.

Carly had always expected Freddy to pursue math and sciences. She was mildly surprised that he had abandoned a career in technology for a film career. Then again, maybe she should have seen that coming. Freddy came alive when he was shooting iCarly and the prerecorded segments. He really loved all that behind the scenes stuff.

Journalism was her direction. She was pretty sure that she wanted to become a journalist.

Sam. Well, Sam had shocked both Freddy and Carly. Something had lit a fire under the blond and caused her to take school seriously. She was heavy on athletics and, this is what really blew her mind, sciences. She was on the cross country team, basketball team, wrestling team and winter hockey team. And she was in the college prep mathematics, chemistry and physics classes. The three of them shared the mandatory Biology course.

And the kicker was that Sam had decided to pursue a career in the military after high school.

Somehow, the thought of her friend living in such a controlled and regulated world like the military just seemed so contrary to how she had lived her life. Sam always seemed to Carly to be a free spirit, wild and unfettered, impulsive. Carly's fear was that the military would crush that spirit, the one that she felt truly defined her best friend.

And, she would have to cut her beautiful hair. Those long golden locks that flew around her beautiful face when her eyes flashed in hyper excitement and she jumped and bounced and smelled like fruit when they were in Carly's face as they pressed against each other when they shot iCarly and Carly felt so electric and so complete.

Carly frowned at herself. Where did _that_ stream of consciousness come from? When did she start to think of her best friend in those terms? Why did the thought of Sam's hair bring such warm feelings in her chest and make her smile? Or the memory of the two of them touching?

She missed her friend.


	4. Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay

Aitch took a long pull from his bottle of iced Peppy cola and held it in his lap. He was sitting on the edge of the wharf, looking out into the Seattle harbor, his legs dangling above the incoming tide. He watched as the sun began its rapid descent toward the watery horizon, pulling with it a rose sky that purpled to the east. The wind carried the scent of salt air and seaweed and ship diesel and the tar of the wharf beams.

It had been a long day.

There was a new bomber in town that was keeping his guys busy these past few weeks. And the devices were getting trickier. Each one was more difficult to defuse than the last one. There was no method, no similarity, no routine. Bombers had a certain way of building their devices and they were very faithful to that one method. This guy was all over the place. And each device was put in areas the robot could not get to and areas that the device had to be defused on site. It was only a matter of time before he lost somebody.

Maybe that was why he was taking all the calls himself. The thought of somebody else dying over this instead of him was something he did not want to deal with. Aitch couldn't deal with the thought of losing someone on his detail. That was his weakness. He cared too much, though he did his best not to show it. Hide it behind a detached attitude and brazen attitude. Everyone just thought he was nuts. He could live with that.

Toby just had a kid. McGuire's husband had a heart attack recently and her death might not be well received. Kinny was almost at retirement. And Hobbins was just an idiot. How Hobbins was still alive was beyond Aitch. How the man had even gotten onto the Tactical Ordinance Disposal unit boggled his mind.

Sam would make a better TOD specialist than Hobbins.

Aitch thought about that for a moment. Since he had first met the young blond firebrand four months ago, she had been a fixture at his apartment and a frequent caller on his cell phone. She even appeared at the station a few times. Sam was always watching him when he trained his team on bomb techniques, listening to his stories, asking very specific questions, reading his books and being more and more interested in what he did. And, at the same time, he was learning about Carly. _The_ Carly. _Her _Carly. The endless comments about relationships and friendships and alternative lifestyles and how the heart wants what the heart wants, and how it would be terrible to lose her best friend if it all didn't work out.

Ok. Sam didn't specifically go into all that detail. But, Aitch was an intelligent guy. The way that Sam went on and on about Carly, he knew that there was more to it than a really good friendship. And she practically beamed when he had told her that the most solid relationships were based on a very close friendship. And by beamed, he meant out-shined the lights of Las Vegas at night and made the sun go _Damn, that's bright!_

It had come to the point that Aitch was as much a part of Sam's life as he was of any member of his team. He didn't adopt her. She just kind of appeared as suddenly as the day she burst into his life. And he had fallen into the role of a sort of mentor. Aitch wasn't clear on how that happened. It just sort of happened.

He would find Sam in his apartment when he got home, unsure of how she had gotten in, or sitting on his car when he left the station. Sometimes she had managed to get into the secure part of the police tactical building and be it the training classrooms. She was just always _there._

Like now.

"Hello, Sam," Aitch said, taking a drink from his cola.

From behind him, Sam laughed: "How did you know I was there? I'm usually pretty sneaky..."

Sam plopped onto the wharf next to Aitch and took his pop from him and drained the rest of it. "Charming," Aitch grinned.

She took the bottle by the neck, cocked back her arm and flung the bottle out into the harbor as far as she could.

Aitch watched the plastic bottle arc into the air, catch the wind and drop to the water about four yards out and float on the bobbing waves. "Impressive," he said. "But, I think that's a crime."

Sam shrugged. "Not my first."

After an endless silence and the darkening of the day, Aitch said: "So, what about Carly?"

"What about her?" Sam asked, seemingly surprised that the topic was even brought up.

"Tell her yet?"

Sam eyed Aitch carefully. "Tell her what?"

Aitch looked down slightly to the shorter blond. "How you feel about her."

Sam rolled her eyes. "Yeah..._that's_ a good idea."

"You never know, Blondarella...," Aitch began. "She might feel the same."

Sam looked down at the water below her feet and mumbled: "Doubt that..."

Aitch appraised his young friend. "You have an overconfidence about every aspect of your life...except her."

Sam shrugged.

"She's your best friend. I think she would understand."

Sam leaned back on her hands and stared up at the evening sky. "Maybe... But, could she get past it? She is so obviously straight, I think she would get weirded out by the fact her best bud has the hots for her." Sam was quiet for a while. "Besides, we don't exactly hang anymore..."

"Oh...?"

Sam blew out a sigh. "Yeah, well...I'm pretty busy with sports and stuff and she's deep in the books. Not really much time left to coordinate our schedules..."

"By _stuff_ you mean hanging around me..."

Sam grinned. "Yeah...sorry..."

Aitch raised an eyebrow. "Wow...appologetic...insecure... Where's the girl that burst into my apartment?"

"Haven't seen her around much, lately," Sam grinned. She screwed up her mouth and looked up at Aitch who was looking down at her. "How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

Sam watched him for a minute, studying his face. "Face death."

Aitch shrugged. "Try not to think about it. Just do it. If it blows up in my face...well, I won't have to listen to anybody tell me I goofed..."

"Wish it was that easy with Carls..."

Aitch smiled. "Never said this was easy, Sam. Damn hard, some days. But, you have your life as you live it."

"Yeah..." Sam was quiet for a long time. She tilted her head back and forth several times, as if trying to come to a decision. Then, she suddenly got up, brushed off the ass of her shorts and started walking away with a serious and determined look on her face.

Aitch called out to her: "Say hi to Carly for me..."


	5. Dying

Sam slammed the door to Carly's apartment behind her.

Perhaps that did not go as well as it had in her mind the entire walk over to her best friend's flat. In her mind, the entire scene had played out a whole lot better than it had in reality. It was times like this that reinforced her opinion that reality sucked.

She took the stairs two at a time, running down the entire eight floors to the lobby doors, past a screaming Lewbert who was going on about people running through his building, banging through the double doors and running outside and down the sidewalk in a random direction. She had no idea where she was running to, just what she was running from.

Ugh! How could she? And with Freddy, no less. Freddy! The Nub!

Sam would have been less shocked and disgusted had it been Gibby. But, Freddy? The image had burned itself into her brain the instant she had seen it. Why him? Why, of all people, did it have to be him? It was like Sam had been beaten by him for the first time in forever. And she did not like to lose at the best of times, so it really burned to have lost out of Carly with...him.

It should have been Sam's lips that Carly kissed. Sam's speech was perfect. She had worked out all the kinks. She had said it without hesitation. Why did Carly kiss Freddy over Sam?

Sam finally stopped running in the middle of a park. It was late. It was getting dark. The park was empty. She was alone. And, as she wiped her cheeks with the back of her hands, she discovered that she was also crying. Sam hated to cry. And it was the one thing that she would only ever let Carly see her do.

She dropped to the grass and sat there, cross legged, crying, sobs heaving quietly to herself, sucking in air in gasps, trying to control her tears. Why did this have to be so hard? So complicated. Sam had poured her heart out to her best friend and received a virtual slap in the face when Carly had grabbed Freddy and planted a hard kiss on his lips. The dweeb had chosen that moment to walk through the door as Sam and Carly just stared at each other. He went over to Carly and she had just grabbed him by the shirt collar and planted her lips on his until the shock had worn off of Sam and she did what she always does in situations she cannot handle, she ran. Bolted.

The icing on the cupcake was that Carly never made any move to try and stop her.

Stupid.

Sam felt totally and utterly stupid. Leave it to her to open her heart and have it crushed and blow a perfectly good friendship up at the same time. It all just exploded in her face. She felt embarrassed and miserable and empty. She wondered if this was what it was supposed to feel like to have your heart destroyed. Maybe she should have brought Aitch along wth her to defuse the bomb before she had detonated it and ruined everything.

Now what was she supposed to do? Rejected by her best friend, that relationship destroyed and in tatters, Fredward likely gloating over getting one up on Sam, and Sam sitting in the dark of an empty park feeling as dead inside as decaying piece of rotten ham.

The plan had been fool proof. Go to Carly's. Check. Tell her exactly how you feel about her. Check. Tell her that she means the world to you. Check. Tell Carly that you are empty when you aren't together. Check. Tell her that you love her with all of your heart and always have loved her. Check. Move in for the kiss and bingo! Fail.

Epic fail.

She sighed and started picking at blades of grass in front of her as the western sky sucked the light away and began to leave her in a growing darkness. A noise pricked at her inner guard who was trying to get her attention and she raised her head a moment too late as a bag came down over her head, plastic and smelling of fish. A weight on her back pinned her to the grass and she became choking for air, suffocating in the steam of the plastic bag, the hands holding it to her neck far stronger than her hands that tried to pitifully pry them away, her strength ebbing with her consciousness. Her breathing was laboring and her lids were having difficulty staying open and she was seeing grey dots in her eyes which began to fade to black.

Her body began to fail her. Sam was going limp. Her limbs were numb. Her brain was being starved of air and blackness was engulfing her.

And maybe that was the best thing that could happen to her.


	6. Better Days

Aitch stopped the unmarked sedan within the police cordon of flashing patrol cruisers, uniforms and barricades. He climbed out and looked up at the three story warehouse which was the focal point of all the attention. Fanned out, a small crowd had gathered, being held back by the uniforms. He spotted a few media cameras among the crowd.

This was a rundown part of town. Most of the buildings were empty and abandoned. This one used to be a glass factory or something a long time ago.

"Not much of a crowd," commented the short, round fellow that walked over to the car from a group of plainclothes detectives. "Media made it though..."

Aitch grinned as he made his way to the trunk behind the car. "The media makes it to all of my events. They want to see the one I can't stop."

His friend gave a scowl: "Bottom feeders..."

Aitch chuckled. "Unkind, Mitch...unkind..." He opened the trunk and took out his tool belt and slung it over his left shoulder and grabbed the bomb kit with his right hand. He headed for the doors to the building.

"You hear from that blond friend of yours?" Mitch asked, making small talk as they made their way over to the forced open doors to the empty warehouse offices.

Aitch shook his head. "Not for three days. She's hurting. Probably holding out somewhere, getting her head on straight. This Carly friend of hers says that they had a falling out and it was her fault, Carly's, I mean. Sam took off and she hasn't heard from her since. But, apparently, she's been known to vanish from time to time. Sam, I mean."

"Teenaged angst..." Mitch mumbled.

Aitch stopped and looked up at the pale blueness of the sky. "No," he drew out, slowly. "Doubt it was angst. More like something stupid I told her."

"This Carly?"

"No...Sam." Aitch focused on the door to the warehouse. "Kinda gave her some advice and I really should have just kept my trap shut. Probably why she's avoiding me, too." Aitch half turned to his old friend. "Sam has a bit of a temper..."

"Well, I'm sure she won't hold you to task for whatever you told her to do." Mitch tried to give a reassuring smile, probably so that Aitch would be more focused on the task at hand. Mitch put a hand to his friend's shoulder. "Look, if you want, I can get someone else to do this one..."

Aitch stared at his shorter friend for a few moments. "No, Mitch. This is my baby. I'm the one with the most experience. I wouldn't trust anyone else with this one." He looked at the building again. "Besides, this time, there's a person involved."

"Yeah, well, don't let yourself get distracted by this Sam character. Someone in here needs you to focus on their problem right now. Worry about Sam later..."

"Who said I was worried? Sam'll show up again." Aitch shook his head and smiled to himself, remembering the day Sam had suddenly walked in on him while trying to disarm a car bomb in a building parkade. She had totally ignored the danger and ranted on and on about this Carly chick, oblivious to the situation. That described Sam to a tee. "And usually in the most inconvenient places..." He squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. "OK...showtime..."

Mitch followed him up to the doors. "Hey. Slow and steady, 'K? You don't like it, back out and we'll do it another way."

"Um...sure..." And Aitch entered the building by himself.

He heard Mitch shout at him from the doors: "You're as stubborn as Sam...you two should be related..."

Aitch climbed the three flights of stairs to the top floor where the bomb and victim would be waiting for him. He thought about Sam. Mitch was right. She was as stubborn as he could be. Single minded and determined. Reckless. Irreverent. And way too easily hurt.

He stopped at the top step for a moment to clear his mind, putting Sam away in the little box in his brain with all the other things he cares and had cared about in his life. It was focus time. There was a bomb to disable and a person to save.

Stepping through the stairway door, Aitch made his way down the hallway of office rooms to the one with the bomb tech in the doorway in full armor suit and helmet. He edged past him and into the small office, eying him carefully. "You look _reallll_ reassuring in that get up, you know... I got this. Go grab a coffee or something."

The voice was muffled by the heavy helmet. "Thanks, Aitch." And the young bomb tech moved away, down the hall.

Aitch sighed and shook his head as he made his way over to the person hooked up to the bomb. "OK, enough sitting around, Miss. Time to get you out...of...here..." He suddenly lost his ability to speak as he looked at the person and the device she was attached to. It was like his blood has froze.

"Sam..." was all he managed to choke out.

Sam gave her friend a small grin, a tired and accepting grin. She had been here long enough to have accepted her position. "Hey, Aitch. 'sup?"

Aitch knelt down next to Sam. She was sitting on the floor with her right hand encased in a clear plastic cube with a bomb built around it. Her fist was gripping a dead-man switch. The device was linked by wires to several drums around the room, likely filled with fuel or some other highly explosive liquid. He looked into Sam's half lidded eyes. "I take it things are not going too well for you, at the moment..."


	7. Things That Go Boom In The Night

Silence had filled the space between them as Aitch sat on the floor next to Sam and worked on the clear plastic casing around her right hand. He had already managed to disconnect most of the wiring leading to the drums of explosive liquid surrounding them and was working at getting the casing open in order to disarm the four solid bars of what looked like plastique explosive taped to another round plastic inner case that secured Sam's hand to the dead-man's pressure switch.

"I told her." Sam said, plainly, quietly, with sadness. Her voice seemed loud, though, as it shattered the silence.

Aitch stopped working a moment on the casing screws and looked up at the pale blue of her eyes, cloudy and greying. "I gathered. Carly called. I guess it didn't go too well."

Sam blew out air and slowly shook her head. "Nope."

"Sorry." Aitch bent his head back to the task at hand, removing a third screw to the case. "I'm not the best one to take love advice from."

"Now you tell me," Sam chuckled softly. She sobered rather quickly as she watched Aitch working on the casing. "You're getting me out of this one, right?"

Aitch paused for a moment without looking up, then went back to working on the case. "Absolutely," he said in a low voice, not sure that he sounded very convincing.

Sam nodded slowly. She had figured as much, having had three days to study the device with what little she knew about bombs from Aitch. This one had a pressure switch in her hand and enough explosive in the casing to take out this entire room. The drums around her were enough to take out the upper levels of the building. She had spotted two motion switches and a trip wire. And she could see no way of getting her hand out of the case without throwing the trip switch.

Aitch paused in the silence. "You know, don't you?" he said, very calmly and quietly.

"Yeah. You trained me well enough." Sam reached out with her left hand and rubbed Aitch's right shoulder. "It's okay, though. You can't win 'em all."

Their eyes met for a moment. Aitch felt a pain deep in his chest. This one was way too personal. He tried to change the subject while he worked at the outer casing. "How did you get here like this?"

"Dunno," Sam answered. "Someone jumped me in the park and tried to choke me with a bag on my head and then I woke up here with this thing on my hand. Some cop came in and found me here and went to get help. Dude with the bomb gear came up and studied the bomb and backed off to the doorway and then you showed up." She gave a wry grin. "That bomb suit is not very reassuring, ya know..."

Aitch grinned back. "Not very." He slowly edged the top half of the clear plastic case off of the bottom half and moved it aside, exposing the inner plastic sphere and the plastique bars. "I think you got jumped by our bomber." He looked up at Sam's eyes. "He's making this personal now."

"Why?"

"Don't know. Maybe because _I_ am..." Aitch would not let anybody else work on these devices and he had become very intimately aware of this bomber by his methods and technique. It had become a duel of wits and wills. The bomber would build them and Aitch would shut them down. "I'm sorry you got caught in the middle, Sam."

"Whatev," Sam shrugged. "Not like I was doing anything constructive, anyway. In five minutes, I managed to destroy a life long friendship and rip out my own heart. Probably a good idea to sideline me for a while," she finished with a morbid laugh.

"I don't think that anything built on the history you have with Carly is that easily destroyed," Aitch said, removing a part of the plastic sphere around Sam's hand, a piece about two inches around that he had just discovered turned and was able to be pulled off. "Humph..."

Sam leaned over to examine the piece of plastic. "That's neat. What does that do for us?"

Aitch examined the bomb mechanism through the plastic. "Well, the pressure switch in your hand is attched to the detonator through a trip switch...there...just to the left of the hole. See it?"

Sam looked closer. "Umm...yeah. Those two flat copper things?"

"Yup. They are opening a circuit right now that's bypassing the detonator. When you release your grip on the pressure switch, those two pieces of metal will part and close the circuit, redirecting the power through the detonator and then..." His voice trailed off at that point.

"Boom?" Sam asked quietly.

Aitch twisted his lips in thought. "Yeah. Pretty much." Something about the placement of the hole in the inner sphere was tugging at his mind. He studied the mechanism inside the ball. It took a moment for him to confirm what he thought was true. Then, he released a long, heavy breath of resignation.

Sam eyed him carefully, not sure what to make of the sad sigh. "We good?"

Aitch slowly nodded, but it seemed more to himself as if he was agreeing silently to a decision he was making. "Yeah. You'll be ok, Blonderella...you'll be just fine..." But, his voice was a little sad.

It took another few minutes to work the plastic case open enough for Sam to be able to pull out her hand, but not enough to expose the circuits. She kept gripping the pressure switch tightly, afraid that relaxing her grip would set the damn thing off. Then, Aitch was sticking an index finger into the hole, curving his finger to the right to hold down the copper metal pieces, holding them together.

"OK, Sam. Listen to me very closely... I want you to slowly release your grip on the pressure switch and remove your hand from the case." He smiled reassuringly. "It's OK. I'm holding down the metal switch and keeping this circuit open."

Sam raised her eyebrows and blew out a shaky breath. Then, very carefully relaxed her grip. Her hand felt very cramped and numb, but she managed to pull it away from the device. She flexed her hand and wiggled her fingers, feeling the circulation start to flow and the muscles lose some of their stiffness.

"You good?" Aitch asked.

"Yeah. Better than I was." Sam looked at Aitch's finger stuck in the bomb. "You?"

Aitch refused to look at Sam. "Yeah. I'm better. Now." He took in a deep breath and blew it out. "OK. Sam. I need you to go down to..."

"I ain't going anywhere, dude!" Sam practically shouted. "Not without you!"

"Sam," Aitch said again in a much more controlled voice. "Listen to me. There's...a tool I need to get myself out of this. It's in a blue case in my trunk. I want you to go down and get it for me. OK?"

"Aitch?" Sam waited for her friend to respond. "Look at me."

Aitch slowly lifted his face to meet her eye to eye, trying to keep the hurt and pain and fear from showing.

Sam knew the look she saw in his eyes. She had done her best to keep Carly from seeing it in her own eyes over the years that she knew that look intimately. And she also saw the determination. So, she only nodded and headed out of the room and down the impossibly long hallway to the stairs, going down endless steps to the main floor. She headed out into the brilliant light of day and paused just outside of the doorway, looking up at the pale blue sky.

She sighed and moved over to the sedan with the open trunk. She glanced inside, but there was no blue case. She felt sad and angry and a bunch of other emotions that all mixed together and all she wanted to do was run all the way back up to Aitch, but a short, fat guy and a uniform had grabbed her and pulled her away from the building and the car, and she was screaming and kicking and fighting them, but she was too tired and weak from three days in a tiny room and she couldn't stop them from dragging her all the way over to another police sedan, to the back seat.

The fat man was saying something into his phone and looking at the building roof or the third floor where Aitch was alone with his finger stuck in a bomb. He nodded to himself and put away his phone. Sam was confused, wondering why nobody was doing anything to help him.

The day blossomed as a black and orange cloud belched from where the rooftop had been a moment before and a deafening thunder roared and the wall of heat and wind slammed against Sam and everyone around her and she felt the vibration of the explosion. She felt suddenly weak and fell to her knees beside the car as tears came to her eyes and she felt as if the life was being drained from her body.

And she cried.


	8. A Hint of Secrets

Sam hated hospitals.

Hospitals were full of the dead and dying, the weak and sick. It smelled funny and was far too confining for her liking. Too sterile. Too quiet. Too much sadness and despair.

And it reminded her of that one night, several years ago. The night that she had felt her life fall apart. The night that had caused her so much pain. The night that had created in her so much anger. The night that had made her lose the best part of herself. The night that had left her confused and questioning everything that she believed. The night when she had become less of a twin to Melanie.

The night that she had lost her father to a drunk driver.

She had avoided hospitals like the plague since that day. Until this day. This day, she had chosen to come to the hospital. She had to. It was the least she could do for the man that saved her life.

So, she swallowed her memories and ignored the swirling tightness in her gut and came in with the little fat guy, Mitch, to the hospital. She had waited the three hours for any information from the duty nurse. She had paced the floor a thousand times. She had hid in the bathroom and shed more tears than she had since the day her father died and the nurse had come out to the waiting area to tell her mother in as emotionless a voice as she had ever heard that her father would not be coming home. The nurse stood there, cold and indifferent, delivering the worst news a child could get as if she were informing you about the weather. Then, she just walked away. And Sam hurt and wanted to stop hurting so she became just like the nurse. She became cold and indifferent and angry. And nothing bad was ever allowed to touch her again because she just wouldn't care about anything.

And then, Aitch, her friend, had to go and do something stupid. And all the feelings and emotions that Sam had locked away in a tiny little room exploded and overwhelmed her and she felt like that little girl that had cried endlessly for her father.

Sam kicked her feet back and forth in the hard chair beside the bed in the emergency room cubical, surrounded by the closed privacy curtain, gripping the sides of the seat as she studied the ground beneath her feet without really seeing it.

"Smells like burning," came the faint and raspy voice from next to her.

Sam looked over at the figure laying in the bed with the cuts on his face, the red burn marks on his nose and cheeks and head, and the oxygen mask that was pulled down to his throat. She leaned over and lifted the mask back to cover his mouth and nose. "Leave this on," Sam said quietly.

"Mmmmmrrrrnnnn..." came the muffled response behind the hiss of pure oxygen, fading away to a steady breathing again.

"Shut up," Sam grinned, watching Aitch's breathing relax, the even rise and fall of his chest, the slight twitch to his closed eyelids, and she could feel the mist creeping into her eyes again. She bent forward onto the edge of Aitch's bed and rested her head on her folded arms. "Thanks," she whispered.

The edge of the curtain fluttered and pulled aside as Mitch slipped into the hospital cubicle with a cup of coffee machine java and a tired looking face, eyes that seemed rimmed with red. "How's the patient?" When he spoke, his voice was low and seemed to conceal part of what he was really feeling, as if he had been rehearsing his tone and demeanor before coming in. He stood on the other side of the bed, looking down at his friend.

Sam sat back in her seat. "Restless. He keeps trying to take his mask off."

"Um...," Mitch looked closer at Aitch. "Isn't he still out of it?"

"Yeah, they gave him a good shot of something to make it easier for him to breathe and he's been out ever since." Sam reached out and touched Aitches bandaged left hand, gently caressing it with her fingers, glad to feel the warmth and reality that was there and the random movement that confirmed he was still alive. "He still keeps yanking it off his face, now and then..."

"He's a fighter," Mitch said, as if that explained everything in the world that had anything to do with Aitch. Mitch looked over at Sam and read the concern and emotion brooding behind her worried blue eyes. "He's a survivor. As much as he..." Mitch let his voice trail away, and looked back at Aitch's sleeping face, as if he had stopped himself from saying something that he had been keeping within his own thoughts.

Sam scrunched her eyebrows in confusion. "As much as he what?" she prodded.

Mitch kept looking at Aitch for a long moment before he spoke. "Did Aitch ever tell you..." He stopped again and looked at Sam's eyes, looking for something, some hint of understanding. "Do you know how I met Aitch?"

Sam slowly shook her head. "Army?"

"Not exactly," Mitch said slowly, quietly. He pursed his lips as he tried to decide on what to say and how to say it. After a long pause, he gave his head a little shake, doing a mental edit. He looked Sam straight in the eye. "Aitch was a bomb tech in Iraq during the early days, after the war. About 2006."

Blinking, Sam nodded to prompt him to continue.

"There were bombs everywhere. Mostly IEDs..."

"IEDs?" Sam asked.

"Improvised Explosive Devices," Mitch explained. "Homemade bombs. Nail bombs, rigged explosives, mortar shells, remote mines, pipe bombs. Aitch's team was sent in to disarm them when found." He stopped again, taking a moment to sit on the edge of the bed for support. "They also had human bombs. The insurgents would lock bombs onto people and drop them off in crowded areas or areas near military personnel. Most were timed explosives." He gave his head a little shake to clear his line of thought, getting back on topic. "Anyway, there was this one bomber, a... a young girl. Maybe twelve or fourteen. On her knees and screaming in terror when he got there. She was afraid and standing in the middle of a street between market shops with a bomb rigged to her body. Another EOD tech was working on her when Aitch's team pulled up, doing his best to disarm the device."

He took a long breath. "No one knew how she got there. She kept saying that she didn't want to die." He took a long drink from his coffee before continuing. "The tech did his best, but there was a timer. And it was running out. The tech had to pull back and leave her before...well, before...you know..."

There was a long silence that engulfed the room like a vacuum. Sam just stared patiently at Mitch, waiting.

Mitch seemed lost in a thought or memory. Eventually, he said: "Aitch blamed himself for not getting there first." His voice was final. This was all he was prepared to say.

Sam looked confused. Surely there was a point to this snippet from Aitch's past. It felt like Mitch was trying to give an anecdote to explain something about her friend's behavior. But, she sensed that there was more to be said. "Aitch though he could have done better?"

Mitch got up and turned to leave, pausing a moment as he studied Sam's face. "Aitch wouldn't have left her." He glanced back at his friend, a memory written on his face as he spoke to his sleeping friend. "You couldn't have known. Not from where you stood. You did what...you did what no one else had the guts to do."

"Wait," Sam called out as Mitch made it to the curtain and stopped. "What happened?"

There was a quiet pause and Mitch said: "You'll have to ask Aitch. Maybe he'll tell you." He looked back at Sam. "He hasn't talked to anyone else about that day in 4 years. If he doesn't soon..." He gave a grim smile and turned away as he left Sam and Aitch alone in the cubicle.

Sam turned her attention to her friend, watching him sleep and began to wonder about the things that drove a person to do what he did. What forces made him face death head on and go back for more. It was more than simply being good at what he did. Aitch was driven, but not to disarm bombs. There was something else he was chasing. Some demon that he would not talk about.

Aitch coughed and blinked and opened his eyes fully, turning to stare a bit groggily at Sam. She smiled at him, tightening her grip on his hand. "Hi," she said, happy to see him awake again.

Aitch lifted his left hand away from Sam's grip, the one with the finger he had used to hold down the metal pieces inside the bomb. It was wrapped up in white bandages where the index finger used to be. "How am I going to do my sums now? I'll get to nine and be screwed after that," he grinned a lopsided smile.

"Yeah, that's not funny," she deadpanned. She swatted his arm, maybe a little harder than a friendly slap, but then she was still a little pissed at him. "You shit! You scared me! I thought you were dead."

Aitch looked at Sam with a casual grin. "Yeah, me too. Let me tell you, I felt that blast hit me like a freight train and it was brown trousers time." He lowered his hand to rest on Sam's. "Mind, thought my number was up when I hit that last step."

"I can't believe you cut off your own finger...," Sam began, but her voice kind of choked and she trailed off. She stared at Aitch for a long time before she spoke again. This time, her voice was quiet, but stern. "_Don't_ ever do that to me again." 

Sam stared at Aitch in silence for a while, just trying to work out these feelings that she had denied ever owning for so long. Her inexperience with these lost and hidden emotions was causing her no end of grief. So, she just laid her head on Aitch's bed and enjoyed the comfortable silence between them. Eventually, she turned her face to look at him. "Does this mean you're retiring?"

Aitch gave Sam a look that held far more seriousness and determination then she had ever seen before, but it was only momentary before his face relaxed and a lighter tone was in his voice. "Naw, I still got nine fingers left."


	9. The Courtyard

The sky had become heavy with clouds and the wind had picked up a bit. The leaves and branches of the trees in the small hospital courtyard bobbed and swayed in the breeze, the rustle of the leaves making a relaxing sound.

Aitch sat with some comfort in a wheelchair beside the park bench that Sam was stretched out on, one leg bent at the knee, arms behind her neck to cradle her head. They were both quietly watching the gray clouds above them roll against each other in the sky, each lost in their own thoughts.

Sam tilted her head back, chin up, to look upside down at Aitch. There was a growing dampness in the air, a bit of a chill. "You want to go back inside?"

"No," Aitch smiled at the sky. "I'm good." He looked over at Sam. "You?"

Sam shrugged. "Meh."

They had fallen into their easy silence after Sam had wheeled Aitch out to the small courtyard for some fresh air after a full day inside of the hospital. For Sam, the clinical smell and the suppressed atmosphere inside were getting too much for her to bear. She had to get outside, into the open for a while.

It was nice and quiet out here. Just the sound of the wind blowing through the trees and the muffled sounds of distant traffic on the other side of the building. The walls and the trees created a noise buffer that muted the voice of the city.

Sam was able to relax out here, feeling the stresses that had ebbed her strength beginning to fade, leaving her feeling tired. It had been an emotional roller coaster with all of the sudden twists and unfamiliar turns. Between the hours in the hospital, the explosion, the abduction, her fallout with Carly, and almost losing Aitch, Sam was a wreck, just barely holding it together. Her tough girl image was beginning to crack.

"When this is over," Sam said. "I'm going away for a while."

Aitch gave a concerned look at his friend and wondered about what was going on inside of her head. The young woman had been through a lot in a short period of time, the kind of things most people went a lifetime without experiencing. "You gonna be OK?"

Sam sat up, swinging her legs around and putting her feet flat on the cement pad of the bench. She felt the solidity of the ground beneath her Converse runners. She leaned forward with her elbows perched on her knees. "Yeah," she answered, after a long pause. "Just brought back a lot of old memories."

Aitch nodded, understanding that there was more than he had thought going on inside of her head. "You don't have to stick around here if you want to take off. I'm not that big on hospitals myself." He chuckled to himself at that understatement.

Sam looked over at Aitch and gave a sad smile, a smile that came from a million miles away. "Nah...s'alright. I got nothing better to do..." And no place else she really wanted to be at the moment.

Aitch nodded again. He knew that sometimes it just didn't matter _where_ you were, only _who_ you were with.

It felt nice to have Sam there with him. He wasn't really sure why and he wasn't planning on analyzing it. He was just enjoying her company. She was so much like himself that he could almost see his reflection in the way that Sam lived her life.

Sam squinted as she studied Aitch who was looking back at her. The comments that Mitch had made last night echoed again in her mind.

"What was it like in Iraq?" she asked.

Aitch regarded her with a touch of surprise and immediately thought of Mitch and wondering how much his friend had told her and decided that since she was still here talking with him, he couldn't have told her much. His lips made a thin line and his eyes took on a distant stare as he tried to find the words to describe his tour in Iraq.

"Ugly," was all he had found to say, his voice very quiet.

Sam wrinkled her forehead in thought. She really could not imagine what her friend had experienced in that far country and she had really been too young to understand the war and its aftermath. She pulled a shallow breath, needing to ask her question, but afraid that she might now want to hear the answer. "What happened...what happened to the girl with the bomb? The one you couldn't save...?"

Aitch blinked, caught off guard again. He wondered again how much Mitch had told her about that day. "The bomb...," his voice trailed off and his eyes faded as if a part of him had left Sam and the courtyard and Seattle for a few moments. When he came back, his voice was low. "It was a dud. If...well...that was a long time ago, Sam."

"Mitch said that you blamed yourself for not getting there first," Sam prodded, wondering what the big mystery was.

Aitch slowly nodded. "Yeah... It would have gone down a lot differently..." He leaned back and closed his eyes. "I would have known it was a dud at first glance." He sighed. "I wouldn't have...well, shit happens, sometimes, I guess..."

"You wouldn't have walked away?" Sam asked, rhetorically. This earned a raised eyebrow from Aitch. "How would you have known it was a dud if the other guy didn't?"

Aitch grinned. "Because I'm just that good..." Sam looked like she was about to push this further. "You talk to Carly, yet?" he asked, switching topics.

Sam blinked, derailed. "Um...no...I haven't yet..."

"Why not?" Aitch asked. They had discussed this earlier. Sam had been shaken by the whole thing. He had convinced her to make contact with Carly. Life was far too short for regrets. Problems needed to be dealt with, not hidden from. And their friendship was far too important to simply walk away from it.

Sam shrugged. "She doesn't want to talk to me. I tried calling, but she won't answer." She shook her head slowly. "Neither does Fredwad. I tried calling him, too. But, I guess they're both pretty pissed at me. I mean, here I am, dropping a bombshell and bolting..." Her voice trailed off when she realized that Aitch had gotten out of his wheelchair and was looking at her with more seriousness than when he was getting her hand free of the bomb.

"Try her again..." His voice was a whisper, but carrying a heavy note of urgency .

Sam's chest felt tight as she took out her cell phone and pressed Carly's speed dial. Suddenly, she found herself wishing that her best friend and woman that she loved was just avoiding her. And, she guessed, she hoped Fredlips was okay, too.


	10. Chance Encounter

**The reviews have been awesome and I have put my other stories on simmer while I work out the plot and story to this one. I hope you continue to like it.**

* * *

The tires squealed as they tried to bite into the pavement, centrifugal force trying to pull the car into a fishtailing spin as the ass end of the police cruiser slid into the turn and Aitch was pressed against the passenger door handle.

Sam spun the wheel to exit the turn and stomped the gas pedal, making the cruiser lurch forward and accelerate out of the hard right turn and speed off down the side road, through parked cars lining the narrow street and around sparse traffic, Sam screaming at people to get the hell out of her way, even though they really were not able to hear her.

Aitch casually leaned over and switched on the roof rack. Flashing lights and a wailing siren erupted from above them. People began to take notice of the careening squad car. He patted her arm and sat back in his seat, picking up the folded open booklet from the seat between them.

"Steady on, Blonderella," he said just loud enough to be heard. "No need to kill anybody...particularly me..."

Sam grunted and spun through another turn, this time to the left, onto a wider street. She stole a glance at Aitch and saw him focused on the page of a puzzle book as if he was enjoying a long country drive. "What the hell? What are you doing?"

"Hmm?" Aitch looked up at Sam, confused for a moment, then smiled. "Soduku."

"You don't have a pen," Sam yelled at him, frustrated by his calmness and the distance between her and Carly.

Aitch tapped his head. "In my mind..."

She had said nothing from when they liberated the police cruiser at the hospital to now as they took corners like a stunt driver. She had been unable to reach Carly by phone. She had taken Aitch's phone when he was brought to hospital, so it wasn't the fact Sam's Caller ID was coming up on Carly's phone and she just didn't want to talk to her. But she had been dialing Carly's phone over and over, her house phone at Bushwell Plaza, and even Freddie's phone. Nobody was answering and both Sam and Aitch had sickening feelings about it.

Sam was frantic to get to Carly. Even if the brunette had no desire to ever see her again, she just had to know that Carly was safe. That she was alive. And there was nothing that would stop Sam from getting to her.

"Seriously?" Sam growled. "You're doing brain work now? Now!"

Aitch looked at the frantic blond and blinked. "Yeah. Why? You want me to drive?"

Sam gave him a sharp look. "No!"

He returned to solving his soduku puzzle in his mind while Sam tried not to destroy anything on their way to Bushwell Towers.

Sam shot worried glances at Aitch. "Call her again!"

"Hey! Yeah!" Aitch said with much enthusiasm. "Because I'm sure Carly never received the other 50 calls...and text messages...and voice mails..."

Sam growled again because she was frustrated and worried and knows that Aitch is right and why the hell won't these people get out of her way! " It's a cop car, you idiots! With lights and noise and..._get outta my way!_"

"You like to yell a lot," Aitch observed, his voice even, despite being tossed around in his seat from all the swerves and turns. "I forgot to ask if you even have a driver's license."

Sam shot him a quick look and snapped: "Yes...kind of..." She kept her eyes on the road for a few moments. "Well...I have a license..."

Aitch raised an eyebrow and drew out: "Yours...?"

"Sure," Sam answered ambiguously. "My name's on it..."

A few more moments went by. Aitch casually looked at Sam. "Valid?"

"Yeah...let's go with that..." Sam grumbled, but seeming a bit calmer with the distacting dialogue.

She focused on driving the cruiser with the rooftop light and sound show through dense traffic and toward quieter street that led to the rear parking area of Bushwell Towers. She glanced sideways at Aitch. "Are you sure Carly'll be there?" Sam asked...again.

"Sam," Aitch groaned. "I don't know. Probably. Maybe. It's a place to start. Her brother might be able to help us." He watched the road for a moment. "It might be nothing," he admitted with a certain lack of sincerity. He really didn't believe himself. This was starting to get really personal. Going after Sam, now. That didn't make sense.

"Yeah...," Sam replied, with little belief in it, as well. She had already been in a place that she hoped Carly would never experience. Three days of lonliness and hell and fear and regrets and dispair. Sam would rather do it again than have Carly experience one moment of it. In her mind was an image of Carly strapped to a bomb in a lonely room, terrified and crying and losing her mind.

"Benson!" Sam screamed like an eruption of surprise and anger, slamming on the brakes and skidding the cruiser sideways into the curb to a jarring stop.

Aitch looked up, having braced himself with a hand on the laptop mount on the dash and the other on the roof. He was face on to a young brown haired teen who he recognized as Carly's neighbor. The young man was gripping his chest and staring with eyes as big as saucers and watching the blond tigress bound out of the driver side door and fly around the nose of the police cruiser, grabbing him by the collar and slamming him back into the chain link fence behind him, shouting in his face.

Aitch slowly leaned over and switched off the siren and lights. Then, he removed his seat belt, opened his door and climbed out of the cruiser, making his way over to the two friends or whatever they were to each other at the moment. "Don't break him, Sam," he said to the blond, with a hand to her shoulder, guiding her back and away from the brunette. He smiled to Freddie: "Hello."

"Ah!" Freddie ah'ed. "Sam! What the hell?"

"Where's Carly?" Sam hissed.

"What?" Freddie's voice hit a high note. "You stole a police car to race through the streets to find Carly?"

"Shut. It. Fredwad!" Sam seethed, glaring at him with narrow eyes.

Aitch moved closer between the two before Sam did Freddie harm that was more than psychological. _That_ damage had already been done.

"Sam," Aitch began in a low voice. "Easy... Freddie, we need to find Carly. She's not answering her phone..."

Freddie looked from Sam to Aitch. "Um...she switched it off and left it behind..." He eyed Sam when she flinched.

"Behind?" Sam cut in, confused. "What do you mean she left it behind? Where did she go?"

"Um...," Freddie said, after a moment of hesitation. "Not sure if she would...I mean, she told me not to..." he stammered, then his face got mad. "Look! Sam, you rattled Carly pretty bad. Whatever you said to her shook her up. A lot. She's all messed up. And to top it off, when she tried to call you, you avoided her like the plague. You just vanished. Poof! Three days, Sam..._Three days!_ Do you know what hell you put Carly through? Do you! She was worried sick about you until she couldn't take it anymore and fled..."

Very calmly, very quietly, very evening, and very tightly, Sam glared daggers from hooded eyed beneath golden bangs. "Where...is...Carly...?"

Freddie had never seen quite that look from Sam directed at him. His blood stopped moving and a chill that came from the Grim Reaper's bony hand gripping his chest. It chilled him to the core. Her eyes were steel grey and the pupils were barely pin pricks. Her face was absolutely expressionless and cold, as if his own existance meant nothing to her. And her voice was very...very...dark.

He swallowed hard.

Aitch frowned at the change in the young man. "Better tell her, Freddie. I think Sam's been pushed to her limit..."

Freddie nodded slowly, never taking his eyes off of the dead eyes of the blond for fear that she would rip out his soul. "She...um...went to Yakima...to her grandfather's for a couple of weeks," Freddie said quietly. "She said that she needed time to think things out..."

Sam slowly nodded, as if she had begun to understand and Freddie was sure that he saw pain and hurt in Sam's eyes.

"Between you two..." Sam acknowledged with a hint of sadness.

Freddie frowned as Sam turned away and went back to the cruiser, head down, shoulders slumped and he thought that he had never seen such body language from the blond. It was the body language that said only one thing: defeated.

"Sam," he called out, partially against his better judgement. Let sleeping dog be so they don't bite of your head... "What are you talking about? It's not me Carly's confused about. It's... I mean, why would she be confused over me?"

Sam never looked up when she reached the driver side door and was about to climb into the car. "She kissed you, Freddie..." she said, as if this was explanation enough.

Freddie's eyebrows leapt off his head. "Wha-? That? Of course she kissed me. Carly told me...um...well, she didn't want you to know she was -" He stopped himself from saying anything more and pissing off both of the women in his life.

Sam half eyed the nub with suspicion. "Carly didn't want me to know what?"

"Look, Sam," Freddie said, quietly, casting a side long look at Aitch.

Aith put his palms up in defense. "Hey! Pretend I'm not here...ignore me...I'll just stand here not being here..."

"Ye-ah..." Freddie focused on Sam again. "Carly and I aren't together, if that's what you are getting at. It's not...it's not me that she wants, Sam." He paused, knowing that Carly was gonna kill him for this...maybe...but, Sam definitely may kill him if he said nothing... "Carly's in love...with someone else. She told me all about it after she kissed me. She didn't want me to get the wrong idea. I was more...um...convenient for her at the time..."

Sam nodded again, not feeling any better by this revelation. So, Carly didn't want the nub. She could live with that. It hurt that she had someone else taking the Sam place in Carly's heart, though. "Who?" she heard herself ask, though she really did not want to know.

Freddie blinked and his mouth fell open slightly. "Um...wow...you can be really obtuse."

"I am not," Sam growled, glaring at Freddie. She hated being insulted, especially when she had no idea what the insult meant. She saw Aitch and Freddie both staring at her calmly and patiently. "Okay," she admitted with a dismissive wave of her hand. "I don't know what that is..."

"Why don't you go sit in the car, Sam, and give it a think...I'll explain it to you in a moment," Aitch smiled and watched as Sam gave them both a look of confusion and slowly sagged into the cruiser and held onto the wheel.

While Sam appeared to be lost in thought, Freddie and Aitch remained standing on the sidewalk. Freddie looked down at Aitch's bandaged hand with the missing finger. "What happened to your finger?"

Aitch regarded his injured hand and gave a deadpan look to Freddie.

"Word of warning...Do _not_ point your finger at Sam..."


	11. Message In A Bomb

**Yay! The next installment of Aitch. I hope you are liking these. I had some computer and time issues, but we're back baby! If you get a chance, check out Jennette McCurdy on Twitter and Miranda Cosgrove as they embark on their music promo tours!**

* * *

Emergency crews surrounded Bushwell towers. Two pumpers, a ladder truck, four paramedic vans, the fire chief's pickup truck, and an assortment of police cruisers, all their lights alive and flashing like a rock show.

Nobody really noticed the extra police cruiser slip past the uniformed cordon that barricaded the area off from the rubberneckers and flash media. Sam steered the cruiser all the way up to the front lobby entrance of the building, where emergency people were coming and going. A group of concerned people stood off to the left, people Sam had seen on many visits to the home of Carly and her random brother, Spencer, who she spied right in the middle of the group holding up burned oven mitts in a defensive stance against the people around him.

She launched herself from the vehicle and ran over to Spencer, pushing roughly through the mob around him, and yanking him away, snarling out inaudible words to the mob that recognized the blond and knew better than to get in her way, surrendering the mop haired artist to the custody of the teen anger management reject.

"Get outta my way, lady...step aside...move your ass or I'll kick your ass...move people...hey! Lose some weight...jeeze...nice PJs...you - move it...GAHH!"

The police watched the scene with mild amusement, knowing that it was better not to approach a mad Sam without suitable tactical backup.

"Spencer!" Sam yelled, when she had dragged him far enough away from the crowd.

"Sam!" Spencer shouted with joy, oblivious to the sour looks behind him and the agitation of his sister's best bud and the obvious crisis brewing around him. "What are you doing here?" I haven't seen you in...um..." Spencer lifted a hand to count his fingers to discover a toasted oven mitt. "Oh...yeah..." It all came flooding back...for a moment.

"What happened?" Sam was avoiding the question he asked. She gave him a shrewed look when Spencer hid both hands behind his back. "Spencer," she drew out long and slow... "What did you do...?"

"It's not my fault," Spencer whined and Sam wondered again how it was that this man had been in charge of Carly for so long. "I didn't touch it."

Sam looked at him curiously. "Touch what?"

"The package that came for Aitch," he said. "Well, I touched it, of course, but only to take it from the delivery guy to the table. Then it caught on fire...," he finished sheepishly.

Sam raised an eyebrow. "By itself?"

"Yes?" Spencer said in a question.

Sam rolled her eyes. "What the hell happened?"

"Nothing!" Spencer exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air to punctuate his outburst, striking Freddie in the chin and sending him flying back onto his ass when he came up beside the older Shay. "Other than..."

Sam gave Freddie a wicked grin, then turned her attention back to Spencer, as Freddie was rubbing his chin and struggling back to his feet with a helping hand from Aitch.

"Other than what?" Sam prodded.

Spencer turned to see Freddie. "Freddie!"

Sam whacked Spencer on the arm and drew his attention back to her. "Spencer! Focus! Other than what?"

"What? Oh..." Spencer had a guilty look, like the boy that had tried to steal a cookie but instead knocked down the cookie jar and tried to glue the shattered pieces together so nobody would find out what he had done, but the house burnt down. "Um...well...you know how I hate not knowing what is in wrapped birthday gifts?"

"Yeah," Sam and Freddie said in unison.

"Well...I borrowed this medical scanner -"

"Wait! What? From who?" asked a flustered Freddie with shock and awe, since you didn't just _borrow_ a medical scanner.

Spencer blinked, derailed. "Oh...you know my cousin Socko?"

Sam and Freddie nod.

"He got it from his sister's ex, Ray."

Aitch shook his head and turned to walk away, but Sam grabbed his elbow and made him stay, giving him a look of sympathy and Freddie mumbled something along the lines of: "Of course..."

"Anyway..." Sam encouraged, moving her hand in a rolling motion to get Spencer to continue.

"I put it over the package, you know, to see what was inside... I switched it on and then...poof!" Spencer made an explosion with his hands.

"Poof?" Aitch asked with a frown.

Sam tilted her head to look up at Aitch. "It caught on fire," she said with a half grin.

Aitch smiled and heard his name from behind him.

"Aitch!" the voice called out as a small, round man in a rumpled overcoat made his way over to the tallish man in the leather jacket and hospital scrubs. "Aitch!"

"Hey, Mitch!" Aitch narrowed his eyes, suspiciously. "Wait a minute...why are you here?"

Mitch shook his head sadly, casting a quick glance at Spencer and Sam and pulling him away from the group a few feet. "Why do you think? Come with me. I have something upsetting to show you."

And with that, Aitch let his friend lead him away, past the emergency crews and into the lobby of Bushwell Towers, past some firemen discussing something with the manic doorman, up eight flights of stairs because the lifts were offline, and down the hallway into the Shay apartment and the assailing smell of smoke and water.

"Gah! What a stench!" Sam exclaimed, waving a hand under her nose to clear the smell as she walked past Aitch and Mitch and into the apartment, over to where the remains of a burnt package sat in a pool of flaky black liquid drooling down the sides of the counter.

Aitch shrugged at Mitch and followed Sam in, trailed by the short round supervisor.

The scanning machine was a mass of burnt plastic and metal and wire smashed on the kitchen floor. The package was still slightly smouldering. Black water soaked it thoroughly, leaking out over the charred melomite counter surface, down the sides to puddle on the floor tiles.

The trio surrounded the package and the exposed remains of an explosive device with burned wiring and electronics around a smoked glass sphere in the middle and melted clay that could have been an explosive substance before the fire.

"Hunh..." Aitch grunted, after studying the burnt wreckage. "Interesting..."

Mitch looked at the components and nodded in agreement. "Un-hunh..." He looked up to meet Aitch's eyes. "What do you think?"

Sam looked from Aitch to Mitch to the package and back to Aitch, wondering what they were agreeing on. It looked like a destroyed bomb to her. "Um...I don;t see it..."

"See what?" Aitch mumbled absently.

"Whatever you two are humming about," she answered with exasperation, feeling left out.

Aitch made a thin line with his lips. "That's the problem..."

"Hunh?" Sam hunh'ed.

Aitch pointed at the melted clay bricks with melted wires sticking out of them. "No detonators. No explosive. No bomb."

"All show? Why?" Sam was studying the device with greater clarity now. She had learned a lot from Aitch about identifying bombs and even defusing processes of explosives that she had a good grasp on what she was not seeing. She pointed at the glass sphere. "What's that?"

Aitch rubbed his chin. "A glass sphere," he replied.

"Yeah, that's helpful." Sam rolled her eyes.

"Message probably," Aitch admitted.

Mitch piped in with: "Question is...what's the message?"

Aitch shrugged. "Save a lot by switching to Geiko?"


	12. My Eternal Kiss

**OK. Let's try this again. Thanks for reading and commenting. I hope you like this one. I will be spending more time on regular weekly updates in future. And still working on the Seddie webshow.**

* * *

"Sam, do me a favor?" Aitch asked, a bit distracted from poking about the burnt and ruined package on the melted counter top.

Sam was standing on the other side, carefully watching what her friend was doing. Mitch was off to the side, talking on his cell phone. She looked up at Aitch, waiting, but he continued to flick his fingers around the charred remains. She cleared her throat and he glanced up at her. She shook her head and gave him a 'you gonna tell me' look.

"It's a bomb," he confirmed, plainly. "Now, do me a favor and run next door to my apartment and get my tool kit. It's in the fridge." Sam gave him a raised eyebrow. "Long story. It's in a red box behind the stuffed badger." Sam shifted her weight to one foot and folded her arms over her chest. "Um...another long story."

Sam slowly nodded. "I bet." She moved around the counter and headed for the open doorway, vanishing through it within seconds.

Mitch came to stand next to Aitch. "What do ya want to do?"

Aitch frowned. "Sky surf on a speed bike from 15 000 feet over the Grand Canyon."

A heavy groan escaped from Mitch. "I meant about this bomb."

"Ah, that's a pickle of a different flavor." Aitch stood back a bit and gave the matter some thought. "Let's get a containment unit up here and blow it out. I can't see anyway into that sphere, but I know that's the bomb. Just can't figure out how it's tripped."

Mitch gave it a closer inspection. "Yeah. This one is definitely new. The glass is smoked so you can't see inside. But, why all this other nonsense?"

Aitch shrugged. "Window dressing? Distraction? Smoke and mirror?"

"Why?"

"You're barking at a cat, my friend," Aitch said, patting his friend on the shoulder and heading for the door.

Mitch furrowed his brow and whipped around, laughing slightly. "What?"

Aitch stopped and looked back. "I said: I don't know. You coming, or what?"

Mitch caught up to Aitch in a couple steps, muttering: "One too many explosions..."

They reached the hallway and Aitch stopped. "You go ahead. I gotta get Sam. Meet you in the lobby." He headed down the hall to his half open apartment door.

There were voices inside. Sam's and another female. The other voice seemed familiar, but was too low to make out. Aitch reached the door and was edging it open as he went inside and then everything went to hell. Sam yelled and jumped up from the floor, grabbed Carly and pulled her and the chair down to the floor, covering Carly with her body as the timer on the bomb beneath the chair flashed a digital timer that had reached two seconds...one second...zero.

Aitch instinctively hit the ground.

The explosion came as a loud muffled thump before the force of the blast ripped through apartment walls, shredding the door frame and wall pictures, puncturing the walls with a thousand holes from a thousand tiny steel projectiles, filling the apartment with dust and smoke and noise.

* * *

Sam had a key. Aitch had told her that she might as well have one for the amount of time that she spent at his place. She fished it out of her pocket as she approached the door at the end of the hallway.

Her mind was thinking about Carly. Worried about Carly. Was she safe. Was she okay. Was Carly thinking about her. Was Carly angry at her. Would Carly ever talk to her again. So many questions racing through her mind. At least Carly wasn't home when this bomb had arrived. And she was glad that Spencer was safe. But, even that had been a close call. She had almost lost the man that had been so much like a big brother to her. They had to find this guy before he hurt someone that she loved. More than just a missing finger.

She unlocked the door and pushed it open as she went inside. And she froze in the doorway.

She had found Carly. Not the way she had hoped to find her. Granted that Carly was in her nightie and tied to a chair, and as kinky as that may be, Sam was distracted by the explosive device attached to the four legs beneath Carly's chair. Mostly distracted by the timer counting down from two minutes.

"Mam?" Carly asked, her voice muffled from the gag tied harshly over her mouth as she looked up. "Mwa -?"

"Carly!" Sam yelled, a mixture of happy and sad in her voice. She ran to the chair and hugged Carly's shoulders, briefly. Briefly because, after all, there was this rather nasty item ticking away beneath her. "Are you okay, cupcake?" She pulled off the gag and helped Carly spit out the balled cloth in her mouth.

Carly coughed and tried to make moisture come into her mouth. "Why wouldn't I be okay, Sam! I'm a bit stiff from sitting, tied to a chair for I don't know how long because some crazy guy grabbed me outside of my apartment door and dragged me in here and tied me to this chair with a bomb...where are you going? Sam?"

Sam had left Carly, racing to the kitchen and pulling open the refrigerator door, bending and disappearing her upper torso inside.

"Sam!" Carly yelled, as best she could given that her mouth was so dry. "Now is not the time to eat!"

"Chill, Carlotta," Sam drawled, returning with a red box, a furry animal and a chicken leg that she happily chewed on. Sam set the box and animal down in front of Carly and looked down at her brunette friend. She looked around for some place to put the half eaten fowl appendage and casually tossed it over her shoulder when she found nowhere else suitable. "Um...don't take this the wrong way, Carls, but I need you to spread your legs apart for me."

Carly wrinkled her forehead, but slowly complied by parting her legs and watching as Sam sank to her knees between them. "Sam," she said slowly. "What are you doing?"

Sam looked up, eyebrows raised. "Well, I was thinking that maybe I should get you off of this thing before the timer runs out."

"That's...wait! Timer? There's a timer?" Carly babbled. "He said it was a pressure thingy. If I moved off the chair, then BOOM! He never said anything about a timer..." Carly was ranting now, fast and high pitched. She was worried and scared. this was her worried and scared voice.

Sam put her hands on both of Carly's knees. "Woah, cupcake. Chillax. I got this, 'k? There's lot of time. Chill the jets."

"It's _cool_ the jets, Sam," Carly snapped back. She paused her rant and looked down at Sam with an odd expression. "I tried to call you..."

"Yeah, I know. I heard." Sam shrugged while she started moving her hands along the wires, trying to find the right ones, holding a wire cutter in her left hand. "I was kinda in the same boat as you are now."

"Oh," Carly said quietly. "Always gotta be first..." She gave a weird laugh that was a mixture of fear and dark humor. "Um...Sam...I'm sorry. About the kiss. You know? With Freddie...I was...I was a bit...um..."

Sam looked up for a moment. "Carly. I'm a bit busy here. Can we do this later?"

Carly really wished her hands were not tied behind her back right now. And she wished they weren't feeling so numb. She wished that she could put them around the blond just one more time. "Sam. I love you. Okay?"

"Yup. Love you, too, brune," Sam answered from beneath Carly's chair.

"Sam." Carly's voice sounded odd. Odd enough for Sam to look up at her again with a worried look. "You need to go. I want you to go. I need you to be safe. I'm gonna die here like this. I want you to live. Hurry, before the timer runs out."

Sam stared at Carly for what seemed to be an eternity and realized how much she loved this woman. She glanced down at the timer. Less than a minute to go. She looked back at Carly. "Chill, Carlotta. The timer's got like an hour left. No worries, right?"

"An hour?" Carly asked, searching Sam's face. She always could tell whenever Sam was lying. She was the only one that could ever tell. Sam was lying now. And she knew that no matter what she said, how much she begged, Sam would never leave her. She would die with her. "Okay, Sam."

Sam went back to work on the wiring. Which one was it? There was a trigger wire that had to be cut so that she could pull Carly off of the pressure switch and get her the hell out of the apartment. She glanced at the timer. Thirty seconds. She became more frantic, tracing each of seven wires back to the bomb and each looking like the wrong one. Why couldn't Aitch be here. If she had only had enough time to get him, he would have done this in a second. He would have known exactly what he was looking at. Sam began to feel bile form in her stomach and she wanted to retch. She was going to fail. And this was a fail that she would not be shrugging away. A final fail. Epic fail.

The timer was counting down past five seconds. Before it hit zero, Sam yelled a primal scream and leapt up, grabbing Carly and pulling her to the ground, covering her body, finding Carly's lips and pressing her own to Carly's surprised mouth in a final eternal kiss that would take them through to the other side.

The muffled thump of an explosion vibrated through the floor as the world around them erupted into a cacophony of hellishness, of flying debris and the sound of shattered wood and glass.


	13. Good Thing You're So Cute

**Okay. An update. Didn't flow as easily as the rest**. **Bit more angst and drama. Pushing the plot along. On the plus side, I've developed 18 show plots with my writer for a new web series that is being developed for a late 2011 release. And, I'm moving toward a semi-wrap up to this storyline. Don't know how many people like Aitch and Sam. Might make a sequel...**

* * *

Mitch found Aitch first, buried under pieces of wall and door and ceiling. He pulled off chucks of ceiling tile, wood fragments and burnt insulation, powder from decimated wall panels swirling around them, sifting down from the ruined ceiling. He found Aitch face down under the debris, hands over his ears, and carefully rolled him over.

Aitch blinked a couple times and looked up at the worried face of his old friend. He took his hands away from his ears and found that they were still ringing. "I think I heard a bang!" Aitch shouted, because he really could not hear his own voice, at the moment. He started to laugh. "Man! What a rush!"

He took Mitch's outstretched hand and was helped to his feet, brushing dust off of his scrubs and body. He casually looked around his apartment. "Guess I'll be moving...," he mumbled.

"Where's Sam?" Mitch asked, but got no reaction, so he tapped Aitch's shoulder to get his attention. Aitch looked at him with a far too casual stare. Mitch frowned. "You okay?" he asked, slowly and loudly.

"Why are you shouting at me?" Aitch yelled.

Mitch slowly shook his head and mumbled: "...one too many explosions..." He repeated his first question. "Where. Is. Sam?"

Aitch nodded his understanding and waved over to the area that used to be the dining table and was now a demolition zone. "Over there...somewhere. Should still be in one or two pieces. SAM!" he yelled, even louder than he was talking.

There was a movement from under a large chuck of ceiling drywall accompanied by two fits of coughing and the back of Sam emerging from the debris, sitting up to her knees, back covered in white dust, coughing into her hand as she turned to face Aitch and Mitch, her face alive with smiles and dark laughter.

"Man! What a rush!" Sam yelled out, the ringing in her ears making her words sound muffled.

Aitch nodded enthusiastically as he made his way across the debris littered floor to her. "I know, right?" He knelt down beside her and brushed some dust off her head. "You okay?"

Sam nodded. "Why are you yelling at me?"

Movement beneath Sam drew their attention to the brunette still tied to the overturned chair. She had been covered by Sam and managed to avoid having too much of the debris land on her. There was white powder in her hair, but otherwise looked quite unaffected. Except for the funny noises she was making as she worked her jaw in odd ways.

"Nwah...mwahh...," Carly moaned, feeling as if someone jammed cotton in her ears or like she had a sinus infection without the nose pain and drip. "Ahhhmmmnnn...can't...hear..." Then, a series of hacking coughs as she tried to clear dust from her lungs. "What...what just happened?"

Aitch bent down and worked at the knots binding Carly's hands behind the chair back. He said to Sam: "She'll be okay." He tapped his ear. "It'll clear in a few minutes," he said, loudly.

Sam nodded and took Carly's face in her hands, leaning closer to her. "You'll be okay, Carls."

Her hands suddenly free, Carly took a moment to rub her wrists and glance down at her chaffed skin. That was going to hurt for a while. Then, a thought hit her or more specifically, a memory. She touched her lips with the fingers of her right hand. She looked up at Sam's blue-gray eyes. "You...you kissed me..."

Sam shrugged. "Didn't think I was gonna get another chance." She smiled a little more as the realization struck her. "You like?"

"Um...well," Carly stammered, unsure of how to say what she wanted to say. "I always knew that a first kiss was supposed to be all fireworks and sparks." She glanced around the ruined apartment. "But, wow, Sam...you really let your destructive side show when you kiss..."

Aitch ruffled Sam's hair. "There ya go. And you were worried..."

"Shaddup," Sam beamed, all butterflies and sunshine, blushing.

Mitch made his way over. "We should get her to the hospital," he interjected. "Get her checked over."

Carly struggled to her feet, but Sam took her in bridal fashion and lifted her as she stood up, carrying Carly over the debris to the hallway. Carly put her arms around Sam's neck and didn't protest. Her legs were too weak to carry her far, at the moment. And then she saw her own apartment completely decimated, walls ripped open to the hallway, small fires still burning the sofa and unrecognizable items that may have been sculptures at one time.

"I thought the bomb was under my chair?" Carly said, absently, as if wondering aloud.

Sam stopped in mid hallway and turned around to Aitch. "Yeah..."

Aitch blinked at Sam, having failed to hear Carly. "Yeah...what?"

"I thought the bomb was under the chair?"

Aitch frowned and went back into his apartment, climbing over the debris to the overturned chair, kneeling beside it. He pushed chunks of drywall and wood out of his way and had a good look at the device. The pressure switch was certainly real. And it looked like Sam almost had it figured out. She only needed to cut another wire. He traced the wire down to the device. Immediately, he smelled a rat. This was no bomb. He stood up. He stared down at the device for a long time. Things were turning in his head.

"Aitch," Mitch said. "We gotta go."

He turned to his friend and paused. Then, he walked through the rubble to the hall and grabbed Mitch's shoulder as he passed, turning him to walk along side. "We got a problem..."

They had to take the stairs all the way down to the emergency vehicles. The elevators were out of service. Sam carried Carly without complaint until they reached the back of an ambulance. She set her down on the back step of the vehicle like a delicate piece of china and sat beside her, her arm protectively over her shoulder. A paramedic started examining Carly under Sam's watchful gaze.

Aitch and Mitch stood to the side to let the professional do her work. Mitch half turned to Aitch. "Okay, so...what's the problem?"

"I recognized the scenario," Aitch admitted, a distant sound to his voice.

Mitch frowned. "What do you mean?"

Aitch looked at Sam, but he was seeing well past her, staring into an unimaginable distance, lost in thoughts and memories. Slowly, he drifted back to the here and now. He turned to Mitch, about to say something when Mitch's phone interrupted them.

"What?" he barked into the mic. A pause. "When?" Another pause. "Okay. Send it to the lab." He ended the call and looked at Sam and Carly, then pulled Aitch a bit further away. "That was my guy at the hospital. A letter was left for you on the Admitting desk. They're checking video surveillance, but I'm willing to guess that will be a blank."

"Probably."

"The letter said only: You Know Why." Mitch studied Aitch's face for a reaction and saw a flash of something. "What?"

Aitch shook his head. "Dunno. Nothing. Maybe." He looked up at the darkening sky, heavy with clouds. A storm gathering. "Ghosts..."

"She's dehydrated," the paramedic interrupted. "But, she'll be okay. I don't think we need to take her in."

"Thanks," Mitch acknowledged.

Aitch moved over to Carly and Sam on the back of the ambulance. His face was sad and distant. "I'm sorry, Sam." It was all he could think of saying.

Sam looked away from Carly to her friend, a puzzled expression on her face. "For what? We're alive, right? What happened up there, anyway? I thought Carly was on the bomb."

"That was a trigger," Aitch said, plainly. "A diversion. If Spencer hadn't intercepted the package, I would have taken it into my apartment and found Carly tied to a chair with a bomb under her. The bomb was hooked to a wireless transmitter. Probably what sent a signal to detonate the first bomb. Although, it could have been planned for any number of scenarios. In the end, the chair bomb was a diversion so nobody would take a hard look at the package. And if anyone did look at the first package and defused the fake bomb there...the sphere bomb would have been missed. It would have exploded when the chair bomb was being defused or the timer ran out."

"That's...um...pretty twisted," Sam commented.

"Machiavellian," Carly added, grimly.

Sam turned to Carly with a frown. "Mackiawhatnow?"

Carly reached over and patted the blond's cheek. "Yer so lucky I love you because you're cute..."

"Hey!" Sam snapped, then stopped what she was about to say. "Wait...what?

"What?" Carly gave a little laugh in reply, staring into Sam's eyes until something popped into her mind. She turned to Aitch and Mitch. "Oh! I just thought of something!"

Sam frowned. "Did you just say...?"

Carly smiled and patted Sam's arm. "Yes." Then, to Aitch and Mitch: "I know what he looks like...bomber guy."

Aitch stared intently at Carly. "Black hair, brown eyes, about five-ten, acne scars on his cheeks, maybe 30 years old? Eyes look a little bit dead and a lot a bit angry? Southern accent?"

"Um..." Carly blinked. "Yeah...?"

Mitch put a hand to Aitch's shoulder. "Can't be."

"Is," was all Aitch said. A ghost. It made perfect sense to him now.

Sam poked Aitch. "Hey! Wanna dish on the deets? Kinda left out here. Who we talking about?"

Aitch pursed his lips in thought and gave Sam that distant look again. "Payback for something I did back in Iraq."

"What was it?" Sam asked, but Aitch was talking to Mitch and starting to move away. Sam got up and grabbed Aitch's arm to stop him as Mitch continued over to a couple of uniforms. "Aitch?"

He turned to look at Sam. His past had caught up to him. He knew that he would never be able to outrun that one moment. That one moment that he would never be able to forgive himself for. That one moment that one other person also could not forgive him for. And for a moment, he was back there, in the hot, muggy desert city. And the girl, barely a teen, afraid, crying, strapped to a bomb, the timer running out. If only he had been there sooner.

"Aitch?" Sam prodded again. "What happened? What did you do?"

He took a shallow breath and turned slightly so he wouldn't see Sam's eyes. Aitch didn't know if he could take what he was about to see. "I killed a little girl..."

The bombshell dropped, he felt Sam's hand loosen on his arm and he broke free and walked over to Mitch.

Sam stood in shock as she watched her mentor walk away. A mixture of confusion and understanding swirled in her head. Pieces of a puzzle sorting themselves out and still not making any sense to her. Aitch was hurrying away again with some other uniforms. Part of her wanted to go after him, part of her didn't. Part of her wanted clarification. Aitch was her friend and mentor and was hurting. And she knew all about pain from the past and hidden secrets. She took a step forward, then stopped and turned around to face Carly, who had stood to look at Sam with concern in her eyes.

"Sammy?" she asked softly. "You okay?"

"Here you guy's are!" interrupted Freddie as he limped around the side of the ambulance, Spencer supporting his weight. "We've been trying to find you in all this...busyness."

Carly looked down at Freddie's favored foot. "What happened to you?"

Freddie looked down at his foot and back up to Carly with a blush. "I...ah...well, when the explosion happened...I...um...went to run into the building...and...well, I stubbed my toe..."

"...on a crack in the sidewalk," added Spencer. "Awesomest face plant ever!"

Sam blinked and a slow grin spread across her face. She turned to face Carly again. "You said you love me..."

Carly slowly shook her head and wrapped her arms around Sam's waist. "I'm so glad you're so cute..."


	14. Lightening, Thunder and Rain

Thunder and lightening had slammed into midnight Seattle, dumping gallons of water over the city in a deluge that could match the Biblical flood. It had been raining for hours. It would rain for hours more as a storm front swept into the area. The sudden flash of light that illuminated Sam's bedroom was chased by a deep bass boom like the explosion of a thousand pounds of dynamite.

Carly gripped Sam's arms to her chest as tightly as she could as her exhausted body jumped at the light and sound, waking memories haunting her all to clearly from recent events as the initial adrenalin and shock had worn away, leaving her feeling frail and tired.

The two girls had retreated to the safety and solitude of Sam's bedroom, now that Carly's home was a crime scene and not exactly livable. Sam had immediately invited in the way of a demand for Carly stay with her until she could move back into her home in a few weeks. Spencer was staying at Socko's and Freddie and his mom were at a hotel downtown.

Sam held onto Carly with a comforting hug, laying behind her, spooning, in her tiny twin bed, her mouth kissing the top of the brunette's head, staring at the rain as it ran down the window like a cascading waterfall. They had been like this since arriving at her small rented home in a lower end of their Seattle neighborhood. Except for the rain against the window and roof, the crash of thunder and the bursts of white light, the room was fairly quiet.

Outside would be the police cruiser guarding the house. Two of Seattle's finest providing protection in case the mad bomber should return. It was only mildly reassuring, as both Sam and Carly had each been abducted by this maniac and each almost killed. And it all came back to some sort of grudge against Aitch.

Sam thought about Aitch. He had vanished from the scene at Bushwell Towers and had not been heard from since. Or Mitch. Sam had Aitch's phone so had been unable to call him. And Mitch's phone went to voicemail and Sam had gotten tired of leaving messages after the tenth one. Sam and Carly were brought here in the police cruiser parked outside. Sam's mom heard about the entire affair. The police officers left to sit in the squad car. Sam's mom had made them some warm milk to settle their nerves and sent them to bed. Oddly, Sam's mom did not yell or get upset or cry. She remained calm through the entire explanation, simply nodding her understanding of each event as it was retold.

The hard part of explaining it all to her mother had been reaching the point where she had to explain Carly and her feelings for her best friend and the fact that Carly returned those feelings and that they were both still trying to understand those feelings but knew that they were more than just friends.

Sam's mom had just nodded, patted her daughter on the head and told her: "That's nice, dear. I'm glad that all worked out for you..." As if this entire experience was a normal part of her life. Or maybe she had dealt with enough of Sam's antics in the past to be pretty well desensitized to anything that would possibly crop up. Or maybe it just hadn't hit her yet.

"Carls?" Sam whispered in the dark. She felt her friend and lover turn her head to look up at Sam's grey outline. "Aitch will be okay. Okay? I wouldn't worry about him. He's a survivor."

Carly's hand came up out of nowhere to gently caress Sam's cheek. "He'll be okay, Sammy. Stop worrying. He's just busy. He'll call you when he can."

"I'm not worrying," Sam protested quietly, half hearted. "I don't worry. I don't even care. It's nothing to me."

Carly stretched herself so that she could reach Sam's lips with her own and gave her a soft kiss and relaxed back into the bed, turning completely to face Sam. She casually stroked the blond locks of the woman that she loved, studying her bluish-grayish-greenish eyes, mood eyes, like a cat's. "Come on, Sammy. You know I know you well enough to know that you care. You've made Aitch a part of your life. Let him into that fortress heart of yours. Shared a wild adventure with him. And now you're worried about losing him." Carly gave Sam another kiss. "I know you. You get antsy when the people you hold close are hurting."

"I shoulda hooked up with Fredifer..." Sam grumbled. "At least I still have a reputation with him."

Carly chuckled and smiled. "Yeah, maybe. But, he doesn't look as good as I do in a dress."

Sam gave that a long thought. "Maybe..." she drew out in a long breath, thinking a dark thought.

"Sam!" Carly chastised quietly. "We do not dress our friends up in drag and do whatever you were thinking of doing..."

A wicked grin found its way onto Sam's face. "I was just thinking..."

"Sam..." Carly warned.

Sam pouted: "Aww...you never let me have any fun..."


	15. Explanations

Two days.

Sam had waited for two days without hearing from Aitch. Mitch was unreachable. Nobody at the cop shop was of any help and neither were the two officers assigned to protect them. Her mother told her to be patient. Carly told her not to worry. But, deep in her gut, her instincts were screaming at her that something was not good.

And she had lots of time, stuck in this increasingly shrinking house, to think about Aitch's last statement to her. About killing a little girl.

What had he meant by that? It was obviously something to do with his time in Iraq. And Sam was old enough and streetwise enough to understand that shit happens. Especially in a war zone.

"Hey, you," Carly began, poking Sam in the cheek as she sat down on the bed beside her. Carly had just come from the shower and was still wrapped in a towel with another around the hair on her head. They had rarely left the bedroom except to eat and visit the washroom. "You look distant."

Sam shifted to look at Carly. "Do you remember the last thing that Aitch said to me?"

Carly frowned. She had guessed that this would come to a head eventually. She watched Sam carefully, reading her eyes. "Yeah... Does that bother you?"

Shrugging a little, Sam put her hand on Carly's and started playing with her fingers. "Well...I can't say that it hasn't made me think of him a bit..."

"Different?" Carly offered.

"Yeah." Sam was quiet for a moment. "I never really thought about Aitch in that way. I mean, to have _killed_ someone." Sam frowned. "That's a lot to take in."

Carly took Sam's hands in her own and rubbed her thumbs across the soft skin. "Look. Aitch was a soldier. And now he's a police man. Both are occupations that have a certain amount of moral ambiguity."

Sam stared blankly at Carly.

Carly sighed. "It means being unclear. Looking at things in more than one way, neither of which is definitive."

Sam cocked her head slightly.

Carly rolled her eyes. "God, gimme strength," she muttered. "Precise," she explained with a little laugh.

"Oh...well, I'm more of a Wheel of Fortune girl..." Sam said.

There was a knock at the front door. In moments, Sam and Carly heard mingled voices. Sam got up and went to her bedroom door, opening it a bit and listening. She turned to Carly after a quick moment, a light in her eyes and voice. "It's Mitch," she said, in an excited and hushed tone, as if the very mention of his name would make him vanish.

Carly shooed Sam away with her hands. "Go. Go see him. I've gotta get dressed."

Sam nodded and disappeared out the door. A moment later, she opened the door enough to stick her head inside. "You really don't, ya know..."

Carly frowned and looked at Sam's grinning head. "Don't what?"

"Gotta get dressed..." Sam stuck out her tongue and pulled her head out of the doorway before the towel that had been covering Carly's naked body hit the door where her head had been. Sam peeked in quickly to add: "Yeah...stay like that..."

Carly gave Sam a stern look and pointed in the direction of out the door. This time, Sam closed the door and did not return.

* * *

Mitch was standing in the entryway, his hat spinning at waist level in his hands, talking to Sam's mother. His overcoat looked as rumpled as his hair, what was left of it. Sam's mom was nodding every now and then to whatever it was they were talking about. Mitch shifted his attention to include Sam when she showed up.

"Hey, Sam. How are ya doing?" Mitch asked, gently.

"Good. Where's Aitch?" Sam was very direct, her eyes steely, demanding.

Mitch nodded slightly. So, this was the way this conversation was going to go. "I was hoping that you could tell me."

Sam frowned.

"I haven't heard from him since yesterday morning," Mitch continued. "He was checking up on a lead on the bomber we're after -"

"Isn't that a job for detectives?" Sam's mother interjected.

"Yeah. But, Aitch is doing his own investigation. It's kinda become personal," he explained.

"Something to do with the little girl?" Sam asked.

Mitch studied Sam for a moment, then slowly nodded. "Yeah."

"Is this the girl you talked about in the hospital?" Sam asked.

Mitch looked at his shoes, as if they were suddenly very important at that very moment. "Um...yeah."

"Was that this girl he killed?" Sam said it, point blank. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her mother turn sharply to look at Sam, but Sam kept her focus hard and directly on Mitch.

Mitch looked up to meet the steel of Sam's eyes. He could only nod, as if it pained him to answer the question verbally.

Sam stared Mitch down, or tried to. She wanted to know more and at the same time was almost afraid to know more. Was this an area of Aitch's life that she wanted to be fully informed about? Was this a secret that would completely change the way she looked at him? Was this a bomb that should not be tampered with?

Carly appeared beside Sam, hooking her arms around Sam's left arm and holding herself close against the shorter girl, watching the exchange, ready to offer as much support as she could.

"What...what happened?" Sam heard herself saying, after the long silence that had engulfed them.

"I met Aitch in an Army medical hospital back in November 2007." Mitch studied Sam for a moment, guaging what he should say, if he should say it, how he would say it. He met her eyes as he said it: "The psychological ward. Okay?"

Sam slowly nodded. "Aitch was crazy or you were?"

Mitch slowly smiled. _Good girl_, he thought. "We sort of both were taking a mental vacation from the world..." He took another breath. "Aitch...well, let me begin at the beginning. You know that Aitch was a bomb tech in Iraq. He was the best. Not _arguably_. Not _one of_. THE." He paused again to collect his thoughts. "It was the fall of 2007. A small neighborhood of Bagdad. Aitch was racing through the streets to answer a disposal call. A girl had been dropped off in the middle of a market with a bomb strapped to her and a timer running down. Another team was already there, but Aitch was on his way. When he had arrived, the timer had run down and the tech had left her alone in the empty market. He couldn't disarm the bomb. She was screaming in terror for help, on her knees in the dust.

"Aitch ran to the girl with his kit. There were only seconds left. He looked at the bomb to disarm it. The techs were shouting for him to get clear. The girl was screaming in sheer terror. Aitch tried to calm the girl down..." Mitch's voice drifted away for a few moments. His lips frowned in a thin line as he tried to word everything again in his head. He took a shallow breath. "Her head exploded in front of him and she died in his arms."

Sam blinked and tensed, not expecting that part of the story. Carly tightened her grip on Sam's arm. "Why?"

"The tech that had tried to disarm the bomb shot her in the head." Mitch paused. "He was 20 years old. Fairly new. Definitely not hardened, yet. In his words, he did not want the girl to suffer and felt he was saving her the misery of self detonation."

Carly tilted her head. "That's terrible. That's a terrible thing to see. Especially that close. But, why did Aitch think that he killed her?"

Sam frowned, her mind working another way. "Why didn't the bomb explode?"

Carly looked questioningly at Sam, and she realized that she had not thought of that.

"Because it was a dud. A fake," Mitch explained.

"Sooo...I'm lost here," Sam admitted.

"Aitch blamed himself for being delayed." Mitch took another deep breath and exhaled. "Aitch could tell at first glance that the bomb was a fake. He was about to tell the girl and calm her down when she was shot. He felt that if he had gotten there sooner, it would have been him there first. He would have known it was a fake. She would not have died. So, Aitch feels that he is as responsible for her death as the tech that shot her."

"Ohhh," Carly said, quietly.

Sam stared at Mitch from dark, half-lidded eyes. "That's stupid."

Mitch nodded. "Yes. It is. Now _you_ give it a shot telling him that. I've spent two years trying."

"Who's the bomber?" Sam asked.

"The tech that shot her," Carly answered quietly.

Mitch nodded. "He had to live with what he had done and blamed Aitch for not getting there sooner. He went a bit squirrely. Went AWOL and vanished. Aitch had reached a mental breaking point, so to speak and went off the reservation for a while. After a few months in the looney bin, he was given a medical discharge and I brought him to Seattle with me. Long story short, basically."

"So, now he wants...what? Revenge?" asked Sam, disbelieving this is all about revenge for some bad feelings or general nuttiness.

Mitch shook his head. "I think he wants Aitch to have to make the same choice that he did. Kill someone to save their agony or sacrifice himself to save someone. Not really sure. It really is very confusing and nothing much makes sense to us."

"Well, look at the source..." Sam said. "The man's crazy. Is he supposed to make any sense...?"

Mitch was about to answer when his phone sounded. He flipped it open and started talking to the caller. His voice became very quiet suddenly, sombre. He cast several glances at Sam, said he would be wherever shortly and closed his phone. He gave Sam a very sad and almost apologetic look. "Um...that was one of my men. He's found Aitch. He's at the Children's Hospital. He's defusing a bomb. A somewhat tricky bomb. And Aitch gave my guy a message for you..."

Sam frowned. "What?"

"He said...I'm sorry, Sam. I just ran out of fingers."


	16. Not Without Me

**It took a while to get this to sound right. I hope I got the mood and scene right. It's a part one of two chapter.**

* * *

Sam would always remember this day.

It was a Tuesday in May. One of the few sunny and warm and dry days for that month. People along the streets were happy and laughing and dressed in light clothes, shorts and t-shirts. People ate outside on sidewalk cafes and the benches of parks and low stone walls in front of buildings. It was the type of day that she would have booked off from school and hung out somewhere for the entire day just doing nothing.

But, she was not going to enjoy this day.

Aitch's last message chilled her to the bone. It was so final and absolute. The meaning perfectly clear to her. She was a mixture of angry and sad. She felt like she was finally getting to know this enigma of a man and draw some comparisons with her own life. She felt for him in a way she had not felt for anyone in years. The thought of losing him was a crushing vice on her heart and a stab to her gut and she desperately wanted to understand why she felt this way because it made no sense to her. And after everything that they have been through together, the near death experiences they had shared, this final event just didn't seem fair to her. And Sam knew all about life being unfair and she was damn tired of it!

Mitch had to go to the scene. He was the field boss for the disposal teams. Sam went with him. There was no question that she would. And no argument about it either. Not even from Carly. But, Carly had insisted on going, too. She had to be there for Sam. The three of them shared one thought between them: This day would not end well.

The unmarked sedan that Mitch drove them in was making its way up Perry Drive to the Seattle Children's Hospital main doors. Already, she could see people gathered at the end of the drive where the police had moved them back to and also in the parking lot behind the Emergency Hospital. They continued along the curve in the drive, away from the barricades and the uniforms and the hyperactive flashing of cruiser lights, up the long drive to the to the edge of the entrance to the Children's Hospital parking area.

A cruiser blocked this area. What looked like a command station was set up in the back of a big half ton truck next to the barricade. The parking lot was filled with cars except for the area in front of the hospital doors. In the middle of this open area, a good hundred yards from where the barricade was placed, was the big, heavy, black bomb basket. A container to drop an explosive device into and contain the blast. Normally, it was Suicide, the remote robot that would carry an explosive device out to the basket.

Sam's heart sank another ten inches when she saw Suicide still parked in the back of the bomb truck.

She made her way to the watch commander that was standing next to the barricade with a radio in her hand, watching the doors to the hospital that were stuck open. Other than the radio chatter, there was complete silence, with traffic blocked on surrounding streets. There was a pall, as if everyone was waiting for a corpse to be brought out. Wind breathed quietly across the parking lot, the rustle of trees, small debris carried in the breeze.

It was like the day she had buried her father.

There was sudden movement around Sam, as uniforms appeared and took a solemn interest in the scene. The watch commander stiffened and Mitch's hand found its way onto her shoulder as Carly squeezed her hand tighter and Sam's heart sank all the way to the ground.

Moving slowly, like a lazy snail, a lone figure in a ratty red shirt over a black tee, khaki shorts and a ball cap creeped out of the hospital doorway and into the sun, moving one carefully placed step after the other, methodically, attention fully placed on the small plastic box in his hands. The sun played on him like a spotlight and it was all Sam could see through the mist that threatened the edges of her vision and her hand squeezed Carly's to fight back the despair that was growing within her as she recognized the man edging away from the hospital doors and into the open air.

Aitch.

She watched as one foot moved ahead a few inches and stopped as he shifted his balance over it and then moved the other foot, slowly inching toward the bomb basket in the midday sun. His face was more focused than Sam had ever seen him before. More serious. Deadly serious, as if this was the most important task in the world.

As he moved away from the doors, following a couple yards behind him emerged two bomb techs in the big green bomb suits, looking like giant ogres, following his slow step by step progress, carrying fire gear behind two blast shields, protecting the hospital should the worst event happen.

The ogres stopped, staying behind at the doors, holding their shields up, as someone else shut the hospital doors and Aitch continued on alone across the parking lot to the bomb basket, the star of this tragedy.

"Aitch," the watch commander said into the radio. "Hospital is secure."

There was a pause before a quiet and extremely focused voice answered through the radios around Sam. "Check. About 30 feet to go."

"Steady, Aitch," she said, because at this point, there really wasn't anything left to say.

"Gimme that!" Sam yelled, snatching the radio from the woman's hands, keying the talk button. "Aitch!"

Aitch came to a sudden jerky stop in the middle of the parking lot, in the heat of the midday sun, holding a very large explosive box in his hands. He took a deep breath and let it out in a slow sigh. "Radio, Sam. It has volume. No need to shout." He slowly began to walk forward again.

A bit more restrained, Sam continued. "I - I got your message..." She searched her mind but couldn't think of anything else to say.

From the speaker came Aitch's voice. "Oh...I thought you were just in the neighborhood..."

"What are you doing?" Sam asked, fumbling for something to say, hating to say it through a radio.

Aitch shot an incredulous look over the top of the bomb casing at the barricade and the raving blond that stared back at him. "It was such a nice day that I thought I'd take a stroll and look what I found..." He focused back on the flat level taped to the top of the bomb, making sure that the bubble remained dead center of the cross-hairs.

Sam growled to herself. Carly was watching her closely. The blond was trying to find what she wanted to say and there was a struggle going on within her head and heart. Sam looked at the radio for a moment and then pushed it back into the watch commander's hands. In a flash, Sam was gone. Around the barricade and running across the parking lot directly at Aitch.

"Incoming," was all the watch commander said.

Aitch saw the blond torpedo racing toward him. He stopped dead and shouted out to her, just as she was about to reach him: "Motion switch!" and watched her skid to a stop a few feet in front of him. She calmly walked over to his right hand side, studying the casing and the switches his thumbs were on.

"I know you weren't planning to do this without me." Sam said, looking up into Aitch's eyes. Was there hurt there? Fear? Sadness?

"Sam." Aitch was quiet for a moment, staring down at this amazing young woman. "Go back to Carly. Go home. I don't...you shouldn't watch this."

Sam's face frowned. "Watch what...? You're gonna defuse this one, right?"

Aitch stared at her calmly. "Go back to Carly, Sam."

"We're in this one together." Sam was firm on this. "Let's do it."

"Sam...I'm not defusing this one. It can't be defused. I'm going to detonate it in the basket, contain the explosion." Aitch was very calm. He had already come to terms with this one.

Her voice came out very quiet. "What about you...?" She looked away, at the basket.

Aitch frowned. "Well...I'm probably gonna have a blast, Sam."

Sam shot Aitch a look in silent for a few moments. She said in a small, quiet voice: "Then, I'll stay with you."


	17. Moot Point

The noon sun smiled warmly from a cloudless pale blue sky. A breeze blew silently across the parking lot, carrying small litter and dust swirls around and under the parked cars and across the open spaces around them. The gentle wind lifted blond curls and tugged at loose shirt sleeves. The shadow of a bird passed over them as it circled twice and then winged away over the city.

A mix of red and blue lights danced off of every surface and caused a strobe effect on their faces. A dozen eyes watched the two of figures in the middle of the parking lot try to stare down the other. One set of eyes watched Sam with great sadness and fear.

Carly muttered one word so low that it was barely audible. "No."

Sam turned her head slowly to look at Carly as if she had heard the barely whispered word. Her eyes met the brown of her girlfriend and saw the pain and hurt, the fear, the sorrow. Sam's eyes were set and determined. Sam's eyes spoke through an emotional connection to Carly that she would not abandon Aitch. Her eyes screamed of dedication, honor, and commitment. Things she had only learned about through her relationship with Carly. Things that Carly likely regretted teaching the blond tomcat.

Aitch cleared his throat. Loudly.

Sam turned her attention back to the taller man standing in front of her and blinked, refocusing on the situation at hand.

"Sam?" he asked.

"Yeah?" she answered.

"Timer," he explained.

Sam slowly looked down at the box containing the bomb and the digital clock that was counting down inside of the transparent plastic casing Aitch was holding.

"Oh," she said, as if seeing it for the first time. "Yeah. The bomb."

"Nice of you stay in the moment…" Aitch quipped. "Do me a favor?"

Sam nodded, looking him in the eye. "Absolutely. What do you need me to do?"

"Move," Aitch said. "Left, right, doesn't matter."

Sam furrowed her eyes.

"You're in my way, Sam…"

Sam frowned and looked behind her at the ominous black bomb basket which stared ominously back at her like a specter of death and dismemberment. It taunted her with its promise of instant pain and darkness.

"Sam…?" Aitch prodded.

Sam turned back to Aitch.

Aitch smiled evenly and with tremendous patience at the shorter blond. "Tick-tock…"

Sam smiled back a twist of her lips, slowly shook her head and stepped to the right, opening a path to the bomb basket.

Aitch began to take one cautious step after the other toward the big, thick container he hoped would contain enough of the explosion. His eyes were glued to the bubble quivering in the level taped to the top of the bomb casing. Both his thumbs were a tad too firmly pressed on the pressure switches on either side of the box. His respiration came in slow, controlled breaths.

Matching him step for step, right beside him, Sam also studied the bubble and the distance to the basket. "We're under six feet…"

Aitch shot up his eyebrows. "There's a nice turn of phrase, given the situation…"

Sam gave a small smile, admiring the irony. "Aitch?"

"Yeah…?" Aitch answered slowly.

"How're we gonna get outta this one?"

Aitch twitched his lips and remained silent. Sam allowed this silence to continue right up to the edge of the basket, as Aitch lowered the bomb into the dark cavern in the top, bent over the rim.

"We _are_gonna get outta this one, right?"

Aitch glanced to the right and met Sam's eyes. "Um…"

Sam blew out a long sigh of air. "We aren't gonna get outta this one, are we?"

"Sure," Aitch smiled brightly.

Sam perked up. "Really?"

Aitch lost some of the shine. "No."

"I liked the first answer better," Sam admitted.

Aitch grinned. "Yeah, me too."

"You sure you can't defuse it?" Sam had such hope in her voice. She thought for a moment. "You know, come to think of it, you haven't been doing too well at defusing bombs lately. The last two kinda just blew up."

"Well…" Aitch began, a bit defensively.

"I mean," Sam continued, "the warehouse one blew up on you because you couldn't bypass the pressure switch and the one at the apartment blew up..." Sam looked at Aitch questioningly. "Why did that one blow up?"

"Two bombs," he explained. "Well, one bomb; one remote trigger. When the trigger under Carly's chair went off it activated the fragment bomb in her apartment with a wireless signal." Aitch sighed. "Each was specifically designed so that it couldn't be defused after being activated. Like this one."

Sam eyed the bomb. "But, why the pressure switches? Why the timer? I never understood why there was a timer on the bomb. Wouldn't you want anyone that found the bomb _not_ to know how much time was left?"

Aitch grinned, "And wouldn't you like to know that you have enough time to get away after you activate the bomb? The timer is for the...bomber..." Some distant thought crossed Aitches mind and his voice faded away.

Sam, oblivious, continued: "But _why_ the pressure switches? If you can't defuse the bomb, what's the purpose of the switches?"

"To keep me attached to the bomb." Aitch frowned, thinking. "To make me choose between my life or someone else. To make me sacrifice myself." He shook his head. "No. That would be too simple. It's gotta be something else..."

"Well, the bomber's crazy, isn't he? Are you sure he's really gonna make any sense?" Sam coolly stated. "I mean, other than to himself...?"

Aitch watched the timer reduce to the final two minutes. "Moot point, Sam. End of the line for one of us..."

Sam rested her hands on the lip of the bomb basket and said nothing. She just stared into the dim depth of the basket and at the luminous red digits counting toward zero. And she realized that the why and the how no longer really mattered. There was a freight train charging right at them and only one of them could get off the tracks alive.

Aitch glanced at the blond. "I meant me, Sam."

Sam snapped: "Yes! I know you meant you!" She turned and saw Aitch laughing quietly at her with a familiar twinkle in his eyes. She shot a fist out to playfully punch him in the shoulder. She maybe should start watching her own strength.

Sam's punch to Aitch's shoulder was meant in fun. A counter jab for his verbal sparring. She should have realized that at the angle he was bent over the rim, arms extended almost fully into the basket, a punch to the shoulder might have jarred him off balance. Might have caused his arm to shift. Might have caused his wrist to twist. Might have caused his thumb to slip off of the sensor.

And for one breathless, frozen, terrible instant, the entire world halted.

All they could see was the bomb.


	18. Anti Climactic

The lights of a dozen police cruisers continued to dance across the parking lot. The wind continued to blow debris across the pavement. The sun continued to shine down upon the scene.

The thick, black bomb basket that sat in the middle of the open space of the parking lot continued to sit there.

Aitch and Sam continued to stare at the inside of the bomb basket.

Aitch had stood up fast when Sam had knocked one of his thumbs free of the sensor, releasing his other thumb from the second sensor. At the time, he was expecting something nasty to happen and was reflexively creating some distance from the event.

Sam made a face.

Aitch blinked. "It didn't go boom…"

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Sam answered in barely a whisper.

Aitch tapped the bomb basket with his foot. "That's the problem these days…"

Sam slowly looked up at Aitch. "What?"

"There's just no dedication to quality anymore."

Sam looked over at Carly who was busy kneeling on the ground and crying into her hands. "Well, if nothing is exploding today, I'm gonna go over there and do some Carly maintenance." And Sam left Aitch to walk away toward the barricade of police cruisers and her girlfriend.

Aitch leaned over the rim of the basket to study the bomb. The timer flashed zeros. A red LED light still blinked inside of the clear, plastic box.

Aitch straightened up and looked over at Sam who was kneeling beside Carly, hugging the brunette and likely saying soothing things to her. Or telling her how hungry she was and that a ham and bacon sandwich would go down nicely about now. With Sam, it could go either way.

"You okay, Aitch?" came a familiar voice in his headset.

"Yeah," Aitch answered Mitch, watching the shorter, rounder man by the cruiser with a radio up to his mouth. "I'm okay…"

"I hear a but," Mitch said.

Aitch walked halfway from the bomb basket to the police cruisers. "No…just seems…I dunno…"

"What?" Mitch asked.

"Anti climactic…"

The wind hit him first. Like the smack of a red hot hand. It shoved him forward, off of his footing and he pitched face down on the pavement, throwing out is arms to cushion his fall. The roar of the explosion came quickly behind it, a deafening howl. The ground shook with the vibration of the blast.

A voice screamed in his ear. Well, seemed disproportionately loud. Either that or Aitch was a bit deafened by the blast. Everything seemed to have quieted down a bit. Or he was deaf.

"That's more like it," Aitch muttered.

A pair of hands was helping him to his feet. He looked right and found Sam staring at him, wide eyed and concerned. She was mouthing something at him but all he could hear was a ringing lion in his head. She grabbed his face and turned it to the side. What the Hades was she blathering about?

Sam's hand came away with blood.

Aitch realized that this was likely his own blood. He dimly thought that his blood should be on the inside of his body rather than in Sam's palm.

And he discovered that his head hurt.

A paramedic was on his left. The paramedic was shining a light in his eyes. It was bright and annoying. And he was mouthing something that Aitch was starting to make out a little better as the tuning fork in his ears began to subside.

"You're bleeding!"

Funny. The paramedic sounded like Sam.

Sam shifted her position so that she was in Aitch's line of sight. She looked at him with great concern. She was holding up her bloodied hand to show him what she was talking about.

Aitch blinked. "That's mine?"

Sam frowned, studying him. "Ye-ah…"

"Is there a lot of it?"

Sam shook her head. "It's not bad. Just a gash. I think you slammed your head on the ground."

"Explains the head ache…"

"Yeah," Sam deadpanned. "It was totally not the massive explosion behind you."

Aitch glanced back at what was left of the bomb basket. It had cracked open down one side, but otherwise contained most of the explosive force.

"Did you see it?" he asked.

"No," Sam replied. "I was comforting Carly. Missed it completely."

"Too bad." Aitch allowed the paramedic to apply a bandage to his head wound. "Must have been awesome. How's Carly?"

Sam glanced back at Carly who was being consoled by Mitch. "Shaken."

"And you? How are you doing, Sam?"

Sam thought about that for a moment. It was a good question. She looked back at Aitch.

"I'm hungry."


	19. I'm Hungry

**Okay. Three updates in a week. Sorry for the long delay. The webshow I'm working on has taken a lot of my time. We are slowly getting to the point of opening negotiations with Nathan Kress. Fingers crossed and let's hope it all works out!**

* * *

"You got that bacon cooked yet or what?"

Sam had leaned over the patio table to call into the kitchen of her mother's rented house as if her shouting at Aitch would hurry along the frying of the smoked meaty goodness.

After the explosion and the frantic activity that had followed, they had fled the scene at the hospital in an unmarked police SUV with smoked windows. They sped past the mass of media with their hungry cameras, bright lights and annoying assault of questions.

Mitch drove.

Carly and Sam sat in the back, behind the darkened glass. Aitch had taken the front seat. Carly clung to Sam as if she was trying to keep her from evaporating or being snatched away by some Sam snatching monster. Her arms were tightly wrapped around the blond's waist and her head was pressed into Sam's left shoulder. Sam laid her head on Carly's and protectively held the arm across her belly. Aitch simply snored from the front seat, his head rolling softly through the turns.

They had ridden in silence, except for the chatter of the police radio in the front seat, eventually ending up at Sam's home. Wherein, both Aitch and Sam announced that a two o'clock afternoon breakfast was in order and Aitch had discovered a wealth of bacon and eggs in Pam Puckett's fridge.

Mitch had discovered a bottle of beer in the fridge and retreated to a seat on the patio just outside the kitchen's sliding doors. Sam and Carly joined him, sitting next to each other in the plastic patio chairs on the worn deck that was badly in need of paint. Pam took a seat next to Mitch with a vodka and orange over ice.

The smell of frying hog meat escaped to the deck from the kitchen and caused Sam to become more impatient. Carly gave her blond girlfriend the "hand squeeze" and a warning look.

"What?" Sam feigned a look of injured innocence. "I'm hungry..."

Carly rolled her eyes. "Oh, you're always hungry. It's like feeding a starving vortex."

Sam patted her gut in contemplation and a burp erupted from her lips. She smirked as she placed a hand over her mouth.

Carly raised an eyebrow. "Why am I picturing our wedding taking place in a biker bar?"

"Aw, cupcake, I'm not _that_ bad..." Something clicked. Sam blinked and frowned and gave a moment of thought. "Wait! Wedding?"

The brunette slowly reached over and patted Sam's cheek with love and smiled. "Try to keep up..."

"Young love," Pam quipped. She turned to examine Mitch. "So, is there a missus police office at home?"

"Lookout!" Sam called. "Mom's on the prowl..."

Mitch almost choked on his beer and quickly made a show of checking his watch, stammering: "Oh, hey! Is that the time...?"

Sam sighed and rolled her eyes. "Way to go, Mom. Scared another one..."

Pam Puckett stood up. "Oh, chill your shorts."

"Chill your jets," Sam answered.

"_Cool_ your jets," Carly corrected, sensing an argument brewing.

Sam and her mother glared at each other in a menacingly long silence.

From the kitchen came Aitch's voice: "Benny and the Jets!" In the additional silence as everyone turned to stare at the kitchen in confusion, Aitch said: "Did I win?"

Mitch pointed to the kitchen with his bottle. "There just so happens to _not_ be a missus Aitch..." He drank from his bottle to hide his momentary shame for having sacrificed his friend. He was certain that he could learn to live with the guilt though. "Not anymore, anyway," he finished.

Pam only caught the first bit and headed slowly into the kitchen with a very suggestive hip sway. "Realllllyyyyy..."

"Watch out, Seattle, Mom Puckett's found her prey...," Sam grinned.

Carly watched Pam vanish into the house and turned to Mitch. "Aitch had a wife?"

This drew Sam's instant attention. Here she was, faced with uncovering another facet of Aitch's past life. He was married, then. She wondered what had happened. Something tragic? Something sinister?

Mitch looked like he had regretted ever mentioning it and opening up this particular can of worms. "Yeah," he finally admitted, slowly. "Couple of years ago. Well, it ended then. They were married about five years before that. Divorced while Aitch and I were on our mental retreat. His wife, Gemma, well...Gemma had other concerns in her life at the time..." A sad look followed Mitch's words and he seemed to climb into his beer bottle.

Carly was about to apologize for prying when Sam's skill in tactful linguistics cut her off. "What a bitch!"

"Sam!"

"Well..." Sam sulked at Carly. "She is."

Mitch chuckled to himself. "There's a bit more to it. Let's just say that Gemma wasn't too happy about the news that Aitch was involved in the killing of an innocent girl. There was a small amount of media coverage and she decided that she couldn't live in a fishbowl. She did was best for her and...well, she had to make a decision and she did."

Sam frowned. "So much for 'stand by your man', I guess."

Carly studied Sam for a moment and they locked eyes. Carly tried to read what was going on inside of the blond's head. There was sadness, annoyance, anger. Sam believed in loyalty above all else. She hated betrayal.

Mitch gave a tight lipped smile. "I think the three tours he pulled eroded any sense of duty between them. Aitch sort of made his choice and she had to make hers." He took a pull on his bottle. "She moved on. New home. New life. The divorce was by proxy. They really haven't seen or talked to each other since."

"That's sad," Carly admitted.

"Yeah. It is." Mitch sort of stared off into space.

Sam got up. "I'm...I'm gonna check on that bacon..."

Carly smiled and watched her girlfriend leave the table and go inside. Sometimes Sam had a heart far larger than her small chest would be able to contain. And she shared it with a scant few. Carly hoped that Aitch knew that he was in an exclusive club now.

Sam went through the open patio doors, into the dining area and turned into the smallish kitchen. For some reason, she just felt the need to go and see Aitch, more than to propel forward the progress of the cooking.

As she turned to face the kitchen, she found her mom kneeling on the vintage disco era linoleum flooring and hugging Aitch from behind as Aitch sat with his back to her, bent forward over his legs like he had just dropped to the ground.

The first shock was to see her mom hovering over anyone in a mothering fashion, whispering something into Aitch's ear. Her arms were wrapped around Aitch and as Sam approached, she saw that her mom was actually holding Aitch's hands in hers and was gently rocking him back and forth.

And, if Sam was not mistaken, she was certain that Aitch's cheeks were a bit damp and he had a slight quiver, especially his hands that her mom tried desperately to control.

"Mom...?" Sam questioned.

Pam turned her face to Sam and there was a flash of uncharacteristic softness before the hard edge predominated her face again. "What? You've found me on the floor before."

Sam shot up her eyebrows and spit back: "Yeah, but never sober. Or fully dressed." Sam thought a moment more. "Actually, I've never seen you hug anyone that wasn't family, either. Well, not from behind."

"I hear your woman calling you, Sam," Pam growled.

"No she isn't," Sam snapped back.

"Carly!" Pam shouted.

"Yes, Mrs. Puckett?" Carly answered back, politely. It was like a Carly version of Melanie.

"Call your woman!"

"Ugh," came the reply. Now that was more like a Carly Shay. "Sam! Whatever you are doing, stop it and come here..."

Sam looked out the door at Carly, sighed and turned to go.

Pam smirked and gave a haughty grunt: "Whipped..."

"Yeah, yeah," Sam groaned and headed back to Carly. She should have come up with a better come back, but you can't fight the truth.

But, then again, looking at Carly's big brown eyes, Sam knew that she would never want to.

As Sam sat back down next to Carly, looking curiously back at the patio doorway, Carly said to Mitch: "So, what now?"

Mitch frowned. "Wait for it..."


	20. A Man Walks Into A Bar

**A little bit to tide you over for the next chapter. I would love to say that the next chapter will wrap up this little ditty...but I cannot say that. Because you cannot hear me. This is text...**

* * *

"Does my daughter know that you do that with your fingers?"

Carly stopped in mid chomp with the tip of her right index finger at her teeth, the nail but a shadow of its former glory. She looked up at Pam with big doe eyes like she had been caught in headlights doing something nasty.

Pam stood near the sofa, beer bottle in hand, her weight entirely shifted onto her left leg, hip jutting out to meet her hand and bent elbow. She took a casual swig from the bottle and watched Carly with the same dispassionate look as her daughter.

Carly slowly lowered her hand from her face with a guilty look of having been caught with her hand holding the cookie from the cookie jar that's broken on the floor. She gave a weak smile. "When I'm nervous, I bite my nails…"

The older version of her girlfriend continued to look at Carly with a detached casualness. Carly watched Pam finish off the rest of the beer without shifting her blank gaze. It was unnerving how disconnected she could be, so much like Sam, identical expressions as if life bored them.

"Hnh," Pam grunted, as if the very thought of what Carly had said never occurred to her before and this was a trivial tidbit of knowledge. Or she could have been meaning the empty bottle in her hand. "I need another brew ski."

With that, Pam vanished from the small, oddly decorated in retro style living room and Carly could soon hear the older woman rattling bottles in the fridge. It was Pam's third that morning. Carly surmised that drinking was Pam's particular nervous tic.

Sam had been gone since first light when Aitch had gotten an early call from Mitch and both had lit out of the house shortly after that before Carly fully had a chance to wake up. There had been no word since then and Carly did not want to seem like a nag by calling Aitch's phone.

Pam returned with another beer and sagged into the other end of the worn sofa with a familiar grunt. She started on her beer and watched the morning Seattle talk show that was on more for the background noise.

Carly looked at Pam, trying to distract herself from devouring her fingers again. She leaned in to make a joke: "I didn't know beer was Polish…" She smiled at what she hoped was humor.

Pam cast a blank stare at the brunette. "It's not. But there are decent beers that come out of Poland."

Carly's face fell in stunned silence. _Well, that bombed._ "I meant…you called it a 'brewski' like a Polish name…"

"Oh, you were making a joke…" Pam eyed Carly with a piercing look and a raised eyebrow, assessing her. She nodded to herself as if in agreement. Pam went back to staring at the screen. "Sam was right."

Carly frowned. "Right about what?"

"You can't tell a joke."

Her mouth worked open and shut by itself with nothing coming out except: "Hey…you…I can so tell a joke…"

Pam shifted to face Carly and waited expectantly.

Carly searched her brain for a good joke. She came up empty. Suddenly, she pointed a finger in the air toward Pam. "Ah! A man walks into a bar and says -"

"What kind of bar?" Pam interrupts with a question.

Carly stutters to a halt. "…ouch…wh-at?"

"Is it a western bar? I like western bars. Cowboys, tight jeans, big…buckles…" Pam was distracting her.

"It doesn't…it's not a bar that you drink at. It's a bar. You know, like a pipe -"

"Pipe? I though you said it was a bar."

"_Like_ a pipe…" Carly was getting flustered. "You know, metal. He walks into it? Says Ow! Because he walked into it…you know?" She gave a weak apologetic smile.

"What is he? Stupid or blind?" Pam scoffed.

Carly frowned. "What?"

Pam stared at the television again. "Must be dumb if he didn't see the bar."

They sat in silence while Carly stared at her fingers and willed herself not to bite them. It was taking a lot of will power. She had no idea where her blond demon was unleashing terror or facing almost certain death. There was no call to say that she was alright. There was no news of anything. And all this waiting after everything they have been through was driving her bonkers. Carly was certain that her hair would soon start to fall out.

If only she knew where Sam was.

"That looks like my daughter," Pam said with such calm detachment she could have been talking about her car in the driveway.

Carly looked up at the television screen. It was a Live Eye news alert with a camera shot from the news helicopter looking down at an intersection somewhere downtown. There were cars stopped in the intersection, one crashed into another. In the middle was a whip of blond hair from the figure perched on top of a bulky looking figure and wailing on him with her fists while a bald man was being choked by the bulky figure. The bulky figure moved back fast as the bald guy was released and fell to his knees. The blond was slammed against the side of a van. Hard. She fell off of the bulky figure's back as the figure turned and went to grab her, but the blond recovered fast and kicked up into the groin. The bulky figure shuffled back. The blond looked up at the helicopter above with a big leg of chicken in her teeth..

Pam nodded. "Yup. That would be Sam…"

* * *

**So, should I be ending this soon? I have a few more chapters in mind. But, I want to keep the quality and style up to all of your standards. **


	21. Playing Chicken

**Never get between Sam and food. You just don't do it. It's one of those unwritten laws your best friends tell you about. Don't look in Ms. Tate's car trunk. Never make sudden moves around Romy when she's drinking coffee. Duck whenever Vanessa is around just because it will likely save your life. And NEVER get between Sam and a good piece of fried chicken...**

* * *

"I smell chicken."

"Focus, Sam," Aitch said quietly to the short blond next to him in the doorway of the back office.

"I am..." Sam continued sniffing the air, detecting the unmistakable aroma of warm, fried chickeny goodness filling the squarish office, her eyes seeking the source amid the cluttered room.

The back office was a small and windowless room behind the abandoned video rental storefront that faced a downtown side street and was just one of many vacant shops that lined the street.

"Not on the chicken, Sam."

Aitch began rifling through papers on the only desk in the office. There was a table near the door and the walls were covered by shelving full of cardboard boxes and empty VHS cases. On the desk was a partially eaten burger that led Aitch to believe it was recently occupied.

His eyes slowly drifted back to the burger. Double cheeseburger. Plain. No ketchup. No mustard. Nothing. Odd. That was a change in diet. Back in Iraq it was always heavy on the onions. Why would that have changed? Unless...

"It _**is **_chicken!" Sam exclaimed, discovering the source of the delicious smell coming from a takeout container on a shelf, her hands rooting around inside of it.

"Sam!" aitch admonished, turning his head to face the distracting blond and finally catching a scent of fried chicken. "...what kind?"

Sam looked away from the box at Aitch. "BF Wangs crispy and tangy..." she yanked out a drumstick and took a big chomp, ripping meat away from bone. "...mmmm..."

Aitch frowned.

What was a burger doing over here and a box of chicken doing over there? Both relatively fresh. If there was only one person using this office, which is what they were expecting to find, this information would not make any sense.

"Sam..." Aitch began. "Stop drooling and pay attention."

"Hey!" Sam exclaimed, pulling out another piece of chicken. "Thighs!"

"...?" Aitch stared at her. Blinked. "Oooh, dibs!" He snatched the thigh out of the air after Sam deftly tossed it to him from across the room and he was about to take a bite except that he was interrupted by the familiar pockmarked face of the figure in the doorway and he paused.

"I have a gun," the figure said in a Southern accent, a rather obvious statement considering that the pistol was plainly seen in his right fist and pointing directly at Aitch.

"Mumf ma muk...?" mumbled Sam around a drum stick she was tearing into. She swallowed. "...and I have a drum!"

Never taking his eyes from Aitch, the figure yelled: "Put my chicken down!"

"Bite me!" Sam yelled back.

"Sam!" Aitch admonished, looking her way. "Be quiet...wait! Is that sauce?"

Sam nodded vigorously. "Unhun..."

"BF Wangs Special Edition Spicy Toledo 9 Dipping Sauce?"

Sam continued to nod, biting into her drum that was laden with the rich reddish chicken sauce. She rummaged around the box, pulled out another sauce cup and showed it to Aitch. "Yah-ha!"

The figure frowned and growled. "I can shoot you!" He glared at Aitch as he took a step forward.

The tackle came so fast from the left, like the flash of a camera, that even the best quarterback would have been blindsided as Sam flew into the figure and sending them both crashing into a wall shelf.

The gun fired. Aitch dodged right on instinct. The slug missed him by inches that seemed as good as miles to him. Military war honed reflexes and a tub of luck had saved his life.

The shelf and its contents came raining down on the figure and the blond she devil as they were sprawled on the floor. Boxes and bits of paper, empty cases and debris semi buried them. Sam knocked most of them away as best she could and scrambled to her feet, the chicken drum stuck in her teeth like the death grip of a lioness on her prey.

That was when the easy part was over.

There was a second guy. There was always a second guy. The thug. The muscle. The guy that did the grunt work. The guy you had to go through to get to the brain of the operation.

In a sudden flash of logic, it all made sense. There had to have been a second guy.

As Aitch regained his feet and saw the second guy, the first thing he noticed was just how big he was. A towering seven footer, easy. Probably breaking the scales at over 300 pounds, not all of which he suspected was fat. A big, thick head attached directly to the shoulders with no visible neck. Angry dark eyes and a snarling twisted mouth. Hands stretched out like slabs of meat and sausages.

He was big.

The second thing that Aitch noticed was that he really only had time to notice the first thing. The man charged at him like a locomotive on a downward track. Aitch barely even had time to register the growl.

All Sam noticed was the wind and how fast the big man moved as he flew past her.

The stars and birdies began to fade as Aitch tried to suck back in the air that had been forcibly removed from his lungs and wondered how he came to be on the floor, on his back, staring at the ceiling with his spine screaming at him and what all the growling and crashing was about.

Aitch lifted his head off the floor and looked down the length of his body at the source of the noise. His brain immediately complained about this movement. He saw the big bull of a man being ridden by a blond demon a fraction of his size as if this was a rodeo. Sam was mounted on the man's shoulders and repeatedly punching him in the head and face as they spun about the room and her jaws clenched tightly to the drum stick she was currently eating.

Mental note to himself: Never get between Sam and food...

When Sam and the bull went smashing through the drywall and into the storefront, Aitch decided he had better get into the game before Sam did the bull a serious injury and he struggled to his feet, despite his body trying to convince him that this was a very bad idea.

Aitch charged through the doorway and leaped at the bull, impacting his shoulders against something solid enough to jar him right down his spine. His body began to argue against continuing this action. Or any action. And thought it was a good time to just sit down on the floor until this whole matter was over.

Sam was the first to go through the store window and into the street.

The bull threw Aitch next. He hit the pavement with a heavy grunt and rolled unsteadily to his feet. He stumbled over to Sam and helped her up as the bull came charging through the broken window frame and into the street to continue the rather one sided fight.

Joy.

Aitch threw a punch to his face. Like hitting granite. His hand felt numb and broken. It hurt.

The bull smacked Aitch upside the head so hard that his vision exploded with stars and flares as his body almost flipped over sideways. The familiar feel of the hard pavement was softer that them impact made by the bull's hand.

Sam was in the bull's face like a hissing alley cat, her legs wrapped around his ample mid section and her hands clawing at his face. Her growls muffled by the chicken leg in her mouth.

The bull grabbed Sam by her waist and pulled her off of him, easily lifting her up and looking like he was about to body slam her to the street.

Aitch hit him upside the head with a metal waste can that was sitting on the curb. Sam was dropped on her butt. The bull turned. Aitch hit him again in the face. The bull snarled and shrugged it off. Aitch hit him again - nope, he didn't.

The bull grabbed the can in mid swing and ripped it from Aitch's grip. Then, he began to systematically beat Aitch to the ground with the can.

Sam jumped on the bull's shoulders from behind again and hammered her tiny fists on his head like he was a bug she was trying to squash. The look in her eyes said that she believed that this was a distinct possibility. Until the bull stopped wailing on Aitch and dropped the can to reach behind his head at the annoying gnat on his back, grabbing at the blond annoyance.

Aitch was back up and in the bull's face, gripping the collar of his jacket and snapping the palm of his hand into the jaw and upper sinus area.

In a fast move, the bull caught Aitch's neck in his hand and began to choke the life out of him. Spots were creeping into Aitch's vision as he felt the vise grip close on his windpipe and his own two hands on the bull's single fist grip nowhere nearly strong enough to break it. He was struggling for air.

Sam dug fingers into eye sockets. The bull released Aitch. Aitch crumpled to the ground, coughing and holding his throat, trying to take in much needed air through his tortured airway. The bull grabbed Sam's wrists, holding her in place on his shoulders and ran backwards to slam her hard into a panel van. Hard.

The wind left Sam's mouth in a whoosh.

The impact with the van sent her splaying back against the cold metal and she slid down onto her ass, clutching her chest and sucking back air through the meat clenched in her jaw.

She leaned back against the side of the van and looked up at the helicopter hovering above the intersection. She thought that this was an odd sight. She read the identification on the side of the bird: NEWS 7. There was a camera in the doorway pointed down at her.

Sam made a face and hoped that Carly wasn't planning to watch the news tonight. Carly never watches the news. Right? She was safe. Right?

Grunts from Aitch brought Sam's attention back to the fight and she launched herself to her feet. She ran over to the bull as he was throwing Aitch over the hood of a parked car. There was a crunch of metal on metal somewhere near them. One car hitting another. A siren in the distance. A cop shouting that he was a cop.

A uniform, a beat officer, joined the fight, cutting between Sam and the bull. He was waving a stun gun. The bull batted the stun gun out of the cop's hand. It went sailing into the air. Two meaty fists came down hard on either shoulder of the cop and the sound of snapping bone was way too clearly heard.

The cop went down.

Sam stepped on the cop's hip and used him as a launch pad to jump at the bull, arms reaching out, fingers like claws.

The bull caught her in midair by her neck and belt. He was just that fast. Way too fast. He turned her and carried her a few feet to slam her down onto the hood of a car. He lifted her up and slammed her down harder. He lifted her again and for good measure slammed her a third time onto the hood.

Sam was dazed.

The bull grabbed her throat to break her neck. The grip was like iron. Her teeth bit down harder on the meat of the fowl in her mouth.

Sam's right hand flailed around while her left hand tried to break the grip on her small neck. She needed to find something, anything. Whatever she could use against this monster. Things were getting dim. She was fading. She could barely breath. Something. Anything. Wiper blade. Antenna. Or...

She jerked her head to see her right hand and make certain. Yeah. That'll work.

Sam pressed the trigger and pressed the prods of the stun gun to the bull's exposed meaty bit that might pass for some form of neck. She held it there as the crackle of the electric shock buzzed and she smelt the change in the air around them. She felt the current surge through the bull and into her own body. They were both frozen. It was like a billion ants were holding a family reunion on her skin, crawling over her body and laying eggs.

Her finger relaxed on the trigger. The stun gun stopped stunning. Sam stopped thinking. The world faded for a few moments, like a train vanishing down a tunnel.

The bull released her neck and slid off of her. She felt that even though her brain was still trying to restart her body. Slowly, Sam cleared her vision and rejoined the world. She struggled to bring the stun gun up to her lips and kiss it.

Aitch staggered over to the side of the car, leaning against the passanger side for support. He looked down at her. He looked like crap. His face was cut in a dozen places. his skin was bloody and bruised, starting to swell. A stream of red ran from his left nostril and a gash over his left eyebrow. His lip was badly split. And he was laughing.

"Okay. I get it. It's _really_ good chicken..."

For the first time, Sam realized that she still had the drum stick firmly clenched in her mouth. She let the stun gun fall from her hand to clatter to the street and grabbed the chicken leg in her mouth, tearing off a chunk as she removed it. It hurt to chew, but the meat tasted so damn good.

Sam smiled.

"Told you I smelled chicken..."


	22. The Chase

**Okay. This one is a tad longer than usual. I was on a long flight and had lots of time to write. Especially the 3 hours layovers each way in Toronto...stay tuned for more web show info! Enjoy!**

* * *

"Let's not do that again," Aitch groaned, as he stumbled over to the car hood on which Sam was still sprawled out, on her back, arms fanned out beside her.

Sam was staring up at the sky, trying to regain her breathing after the shock from the stun gun. At the moment, even her hair hurt. She felt all kinds of sore and knew that tomorrow was going to be tough. Still...what a rush.

She lifted her head to look at Aitch, despite the massive headache that screamed at her. Frankly, he looked like crap. His face was starting to swell, his nose was bloody, he was cut and scraped and he was grinning at her like a fool.

"What...what about your friend?" she managed to get out and realized that it was slightly hard to speak and her jaw was incredibly sore. She tried to work it back and forth and that hurt, but at least it was working. She reached a hand up to her nose and her fingers came away bloody. Nice.

"Dunno," Aitch shrugged with a wince. "I was kinda busy saving your ass..."

Sam gave a little laugh and sat up, with Aitch's help when he grabbed her hand and pulled her to a sitting position on the edge on the car hood. "Who was saving who?"

Aitch grinned. "Let's not quibble about specifics. Let's just say that someone's ass was in need of saving and somebody else provided that saving."

"Whatev," Sam dismissed, turning to survey the scene. There was a crashed car in the intersection and sirens in the distance. And a cell phone going off. She looked at Aitch. It was his. "Girlfriend? Who's that ring tone for?"

Aitch frowned and fished out his phone. He looked at the caller ID. "Your mother, appearantly." He looked at Sam with confusion.

"You let mommy dearest near your phone..." Sam explained. When she received a raised eyebrow, she grinned. "Means she likes you...I'd run now."

"Funny," Aitch grunted as he answered the phone. "Hi...what? No...I...um, hang on a minute...how did...?" He gave the phone to Sam. "Your woman."

Sam frowned. She could hear Carly's voice in the speaker, completely unaware that nobody was even listening to her. "What does she want?" she asked as she took the phone from Aitch.

"Hard to tell, but I gather she found out what just happened..."

Sam slowly looked up at the helicopter hovering above them. Guess Carly watches the news afterall. She put the phone to her ear. "Listen...I can explain...Carly...Carly!...CARLY!"

There was stunned silence on the other end of the phone.

Sam was trying to think of something to say to get her out of trouble. Nothing was coming to her usually crafty mind. Geeze...what was happening to her?

"Carly, listen, I know you're major pissed...sorry...Pee Ohed, better? Look. Aitch and I...what the hell? No way! Carly...um...gotta go!"

Sam ended the call and pocketed the phone as she rolled off of the car hood and ran toward another car a few yards away. The bull had recovered and was pulling the driver out of the car, easing himself into the driver seat. He was about to pull the door shut but was stopped by a blond she devil as Sam reached in, grabbing the steering wheel in her left hand and the bull's jacket in her right fist.

The bull tried to push her out of the car while his right hand put the car in gear and he stomped the accelerator, sending the car lurching forward, gathering speed up the street with Sam hanging out of the side door, legs dragging on the road as she clung to the steering wheel and the bull for dear life and tried to climb into the car, finally bracing a foot in the door jamb.

Aitch saw Sam go, jump at the driver and be carried away. She was like a junkyard dog with a cat. She wouldn't let go. He watched her hanging halfway out of the driver side door as it raced away.

There was a motorbike in the traffic, the rider watching the scene. Aitch made for him, shoving him off the bike, hopping on and burning a smoking rubber trail as he wove through cars and chased after Sam.

The bull was taking Sam around tight curves, over curbs and against anything and everything in the way. The door was jammed against her countless times as the bull rammed the left side of the car into other cars, light poles, mail boxes. He took right turns hard, trying to fling Sam out of the door, but she held onto the driver like he was ham.

They were heading for the highway. It was wide, open and fast. The bull could really pick up speed. This was going to get nasty...

* * *

If Carly squeezed the Puckett's cordless handset any tighter it would break.

She was sitting on the floor, on her knees in front of the television, watching her life hang on the edge as the scene played out on the screen from the camera in the news helicopter as it followed the chase along the highway. Her hands held the phone in a death grip which was what probably saved her nails from an ugly fate.

"Twenty bucks says she kicks his ass," Pam said, casually from the sofa behind Carly.

Carly twisted her head to look behind her at the older Puckett. She was calmly sitting back with one leg crossed over the other, drinking a beer as if she were watching a sports game. If she had a reaction, it was one of bored impatience. She stared at Sam's mother and frowned, causing her eyebrows to almost meet. They didn't though as she was not a uni-brow. She was meticulous about her appearance.

"Mrs. Puckett! That's your daughter...!" Carly spluttered.

Pam raised an eyebrow. "You pluck, don't you?"

Carly touched the bridge of her nose where it met the nude point between her eyes. It was a self conscious movement. "Nobody likes a uni-brow," she snapped.

"Hunh," Pam hunhed. "Since you're about to be my daughter-in-law, call me Pam...or mom...or anything other than Mrs. Puckett. And I know it's my daughter. That's why I went as high as twenty bucks. You want the bet or not?"

"No!"

Pam shrugged. "Suit yourself..." She took another drink.

Carly spun back to the screen. She was upset that Sam's mom didn't take this situation more seriously as her daughter was hanging out of the driver side door of a car speeding recklessly up the crowded highway. She was already hurt. She can't possibly hang on forever...

Wait...did Sam's mom actually just ask Carly to call her 'Mom'? Daughter In Law? That had a nice ring to it...

Carly shook her head. Focus!

The car was careening back and forth around traffic, slamming into the side of a random car or the center guard divider. And there was Aitch speeding into view on a motorcycle, catching up to the reckless car.

Aitch wasn't wearing a helmet. That's not safety. There are laws about that.

Carly groaned, she was beginning to get hysterical and her mind was drifting.

It was obvious that there was no way that Aitch was going to get around the car safely. The car could easily ram him off the road. That must have occurred to him because he started backing off.

Carly sat up quick. No! Aitch had backed off completely and Sam was getting too far ahead. Now Aitch veered off the next exit, leaving the chase and leaving Sam alone. What the hell?

Sam was alone with this maniac at the wheel. There were no cops. Aitch was gone. She was going to lose the only person that gave her breath. Her heart was tight in her chest as she watched her life collapse on digital media along with the rest of Seattle.

Was it an hour or a handful of minutes? It seemed like forever. The highway was endless. Sam was hammered endlessly. She would be hanging on by sheer bitchiness now.

The camera had the car in its sight. She could see Sam holding on for dear life.

Sam's head suddenly snapped up, looking ahead of the car. The tires smoked as brakes locked. Something slammed into the front end of the car and it swerved and spun to the left, a bike went flying over the car, the wreckage spinning endlessly out of camera shot, a blond body was flung away from the spinning car as it hit the divider, jumped it in a flip, and crashed onto an oncoming car, rolled under a fuel tanker that was smoking its brakes, and the car finally stopped upside down and half leaning against the outer rail of the elevated highway, smoking and tires spinning.

The helicopter was coming around for a view that turned with it for a 360 of the event. The view pulled back and she saw the wreckage shrink until she could now make out the motionless figure of the blond sprawled on the pavement.

Her heart felt as if it had stopped beating.

"Damn it," Pam said from behind her. "She almost cost be twenty dollars..."

* * *

Death has to be better than this.

Sam let that thought pass through her mind as she groaned on the hard, rough highway surface. She hurt. Badly. Her arms felt as if they had been yanked from her sockets and all the bits joining bone to muscle had been twisted, knotted and cut. Bits of her skin felt on fire. Exposed legs, arms, face, head. Road rash was likely. And it hurt to breathe.

Slowly. Very slowly. She moved. Getting up on all fours like a half dead dog. Her blond hair fell beside her head, dirty, matted, bloody. Swell. Her arms were scraped to hell with a rash and a thousand thousand cuts. Blood was dripping from her nose and onto the pavement.

She struggled to a partial crouch and tried to stand. It was difficult and the universe spun for her in ways that she was certain it was not supposed to. She felt like vomiting and did so.

That hurt. And really wasn't that satisfying.

It took several years, but she made it to her feet. Standing. Well, swaying really. Falling without actually hitting the ground.

Ahead of her, on the other side of the highway, the car she had been wrestling was upside down, ass up on the far railing. It was smoking. It was on a bit of a decline in the road. Before the car and her was another crunched car with flames licking out from under the hood. The driver had scrambled out of it and left it to burn. A bit behind her was an overturned tanker, belching fuel in a rapidly expanding lake that approached both cars.

The memory flashed in her head of that last incident. That last moment. As Aitch appeared through the traffic, speeding against it, hurtling straight for the car. The brakes. The impact. The air. The hard ground. The pain.

She limped over to the median and with great agony managed to crawl over it and shuffle toward the flipped car. The bull was half in and half out of the doorway. The amount of blood around his head told her that he was dead. Or soon would be. No rush. As long as the final result was that he was dead, she was okay with that.

Reaching the car, she carefully got to her knees and looked inside. The roof was crushed down to almost meet the seat backs. Both side windows were squeezed to slits. The rear window was nothing but roof steel. And trapped in the back seat was Aitch, staring back at her, face cut a thousand ways, bleeding, laying on the roof, face resting on the small space between seat back and roof.

He was grinning.

"You look like shit, Sam."

Sam stuck out her tongue. A sharp pain followed the move but it was better than trying to give him the finger. "You really know how to show a girl a good time..."

"Eh...yeah...as long as you're having fun, Sam." Aitch struggled into a better position and tried to crawl out from the back seat by squeezing between the crushed roof and the front seats. It didn't take long to realize that it wasn't going to happen. There was not enough room. He looked at Sam and frowned. "Guess I'm stuck here for a bit."

"Yeahhh...," Sam said, slowly, distracted by a smell that she was sniffing out. She turned to look out the shattered windscreen.

The gas from the tanker was spilling closer in a rapidly creeping river, running down the slight incline toward the crashed vehicles. It was mostly past the burning wreckage, almost to the overturned sedan they were sprawled in. A second rivulet was branching toward the flames of the other car. In a few moments, the accident scene would be awash in fire.

"Uh oh..." Sam said, quietly. She turned to face what she could see of Aitch. She looked at the seat back trapping him in the back seat. She grabbed the seat and began to yank it toward her, trying to free Aitch. She glared at him. "Little help?"

Aitch put his feet against the seat back and braced his back against the rear seat and then pushed for all he could, feeling a sudden piercing pain in his left leg. A sprain, torn tendons, or broken bone, he wasn't sure which, just that it hurt.

The two of them worked at the seat backs, pulling and pushing, trying to force it open enough for Aitch to escape as the fuel splashed against the roof and seeped inside, washing them both in flammable liquid, the stench of gasoline sickening them both.

"This can't be good for you," Aitch jested, grimly, giving up on the seat and laying back, trying to ignore the burning pain in his legs and his lungs.

"What are you doing? Keep pushing!" Sam shouted, taking frequent looks over her shoulder at the burning car and the creeping gas. She attacked the seat back with an urgency, knowing what was about to happen in only a few moments when gas met flame. "Aitch!"

"Sam..." Aitch said, calmly. He was stoic again, tired.

"...Aitch..." Sam said, in barely a whisper. She reached her arm between the seats, her hand touching Aitch's bloodied face. "No..."

Aitch held her hand to his face. He turned the palm to his lips and kissed it, his eyes never leaving her. "Sam...get out of the car. Get away from the gas. You can't save me."

"YES I CAN!" Sam screamed and retracted her arm to tear in fury at the seats.

Aitch reached forward and put his hands over hers. "Sam...it's time to let me go. You're not strong enough."

Sam had tears in her eyes as she stared at Aitch's face. Tears of sorrow, tears of frustration, tears of rage. "I'm not leaving you, Aitch. I...I can't. Not after all this... I can't lose you, too."

"Sam, listen to me," Aitch said, firmly. "You cannot save me. You are not strong enough. You need to know your limitations and give up. It's okay. I'm okay with it." He nodded his head to her, willing her to listen.

"I...no, I... Aitch..." Sam was at a loss for words. There was so much she needed to say to this man. "Aitch, I...I don't...how will I tell my mother?"

Aitch grinned. "Tell her you just weren't strong enough."

Hands were on Sam's legs and she was pulled roughly from the car's upside down front seat, away from Aitch. A body in uniform was lifting her to her feet and pulling her back toward the barricade, away from the wreckage and the gas which was like a lake now.

_Not strong enough_, echoed in her head.

Sam growled.

Sam shook off the hands restraining her.

Sam screamed like a banshee and ran back to the car, leaping into the driver door, grabbing the seat back, levering with her feet wedged against the roof and passenger seat as she pulled and pulled on the driver seat back, screaming as the burning pain of aching and tearing muscles in her arms and legs threatened to snap, as her abs felt on fire. Her eyes were shut to everything and she focused on only one objective.

Hands were on her again and very powerfully yanked her from the car and to her feet, holding her as she struggled to get back into the car. The hands turned her around and she focused on the bald headed face smiling at her with a twinkle in swollen eyes. She froze.

"Thanks," Aitch said. "But, you could have stopped after you made enough room for me to crawl out..."

Sam frowned, confused. "What? How? You...?"

"I knew if you were pissed off enough at being told you were too weak that you'd be too stubborn to let it pass..." Aitch chuckled. "Predicable Puckett..."

"Shut up!" Sam yelled and threw her arms around the taller man and hugged into his neck.

She saw the flash first.

Aitch heard the sound.

A solid and loud _whoomp!_

They both broke away and looked down at the lake of fuel they were standing in, both soaked with gas. It was in their clothing and their hair. They looked up at each other with the same unifying thought.

"Shit."

It was said in unison, as if they were of the same mind. They turned to face the flame.

The flames of the wreckage had ignited the lake of fuel. The wall of flames was burning its way like a storm straight for them. It was like staring down a freight train. Twenty yards away. Ten yards. Five yards. Ten feet. Seven feet. Five feet...

_Shhhfffooooommmmm!_

* * *

**Okay. So, I'd write more, but the flight attendant just told me to put this netbook away and prepare for landing at Winnipeg airport. I'll leave it here for now. Let me know if you like it so far! **


	23. Face Plant

The shower stung like the bite of a thousand little peckerhead mosquitos.

At least, that was the only analogy that came into her head as the prickly hot water spray stabbed at her exposed skin. On the other hand, her muscles beneath the skin were just too tired to notice and too sore to care.

Sam pressed her palms flat against the wall below the showerhead and leaned against her outstretched arms to let the water jet wash over her head, neck and back. Her head was bowed and her blond hair hung with the river of water over her downturned face like a damp veil. Her eyes were closed as she listened to the sound of the spray on the tub and the water as it ran down the drain.

Oh, and her head hurt like a thousand little peckerhead mosquitos with bagpipes.

Sam hated bagpipes.

Gradually she became aware of another presence in the bathroom. She was not alone. Aitch was flamed out in the bedroom with her mother. So, there was only one other person this was likely to be.

"If you're here to kill me, make it quick. I'm too sore to fight and too tired to die," Sam called out.

The shower door was pulled open and a rush of less warm air came flowing in to chill her wet body. Slowly, Sam turned her head to the right and peered out between wet strands of hair at her intruder. She gave Carly her trademark lazy half-grin.

"Hey, cupcake," Sam drawled. "Wanna join me?"

Carly slowly shook her head in amusement at the drowned cat that was her girlfriend. Never had she seen such an example of the walking dead as what was before her eyes. She took in the straggly hair, the purpling bruises and the scrapes that marred Sam's once lovely skin. Sam's stance was the look of the utterly exhausted.

"I'd join you, Babe," Carly began, "but in your condition, I'd probably kill you."

"Then, I'd die happy…"

Sam eyed the sink counter and the bottle of hurty liquid, bandage gauze and surgical tape that stared back at her in gleeful joy to inflict further pain upon her. She sighed. "I suppose it's time to let you play Nurse Rachet?"

"Oh, Sam," Carly groaned. "I'm not _that_ bad…"

Carly reached in past Sam's face and twisted the shower nobs to stop the flow of water. The air became suddenly colder for Sam. Carly handed Sam a towel as the shorter blond slowly straightened up with much effort and Carly enjoyed the view of two ample sized breasts staring back at her.

Sam casually watched Carly watching her. Well, watching bits of her. She towel dried her hair. "You do know that you have two of your own to look at."

Carly's chocolate eyes met Sam's hazel-green orbs. She grinned. "Yes, Sammy. But mine are put away at the moment. And besides…" Carly reached out her hands to take each of Sam's breasts in the cup of her palms. "I like yours better."

"No doubt…" Sam made a move to step out of the shower.

The plan was to do something incredible smooth like grabbing Carly's waist and bringing her in for a long, deep and passionate kiss.

Poor planning was exhibited by Sam face planting the bathroom tile as her left knee gave out and she spun out of Carly's loose breast hold to fall straight for the tiled deck. Her arms and palms took most of the impact and the muscles in her back screamed at her for the sudden jolt of abuse.

Sam lay still on her chest on the cold tiled floor and smoothly groaned. "Ouch…"

Carly stood in silence over Sam's prone body for a few moments, staring at the curve of muscles and skin, a little lost in the view of taught hamstrings that formed the two meaty mounds below her tailbone.

Sam slowly turned her face to the right and looked up through a mop of damp hair at her girlfriend who was looking down at her. Well, at bits of her. "Yer checking out my ass, now. Aren't you?"

There was a short silence.

Carly smiled. "Uhm… yep, pretty much."


	24. Vibrations

It was the vibration that woke him up.

The soft but incessant buzzing from the Raspberry phone that was still on his hip which dragged him from the world of slumber. He opened his eyes to the darkness of the room and felt the warmth of Pam curled up next to him on the bed. They were both still fully dressed.

He remembered being so tired that all he wanted to do was sleep and Pam had been helpful enough to get him to a bed. Everything after that was mostly a blank.

He pulled the phone from his hip and looked at the indicator on the front. It was a text message. He flipped open the lid and blinked a few times against the light of the screen and read the message.

**Time for you and me. Meet Chokehurst hanger 4D. 20 minutes. Mitch is here. 1 will die. You or him. Let us finish this.**

It took a moment for it all to register.

He blinked a few times, folded the phone and tucked it away on his hip. The clock on the phone read 3:22 AM. This day was not starting on a happy note.

Carefully, Aitch edged away from Pam's sleeping body and got up from the bed. She mumbled a complaint at the sudden cold and rolled over, starting to softly snore back into sleep. He gave her a final, appreciative look, a flash of potential possibilities that never will be passing through his mind.

With a quiet sigh, he headed out of the room and to the livingroom. He quickly slipped into his shoes and threw on a windbreaker. In a moment, he was out of the house and heading for the street.

The sound of the door opening and the pad of bare feet on the short cement walkway behind him made him stop and turn around to find his blond sidekick hustling up to him in the glow of street lamps.

"Where are you going?" she demanded.

Aitch gave her a sad smile. "Sam. Go back inside. I'll… You know, it's been a fun ride…"

"You aren't coming back." Sam said it as a statement.

There was a precious silence between them as Aitch looked into the eyes of his young friend. "…no."

With that, Aitch turned and headed down the street, quickly walking toward the main road to hail a cab or something. He had twenty minutes to get to the private airstrip outside of Seattle.

Sam stood and stared at Aitch as he walked away, frozen in place for a few moments. Then, her face set in determination; she started to follow until a voice from behind her made her come to a sudden halt.

"Sam!" Carly's voice was a quiet but stern tone. "No! You are not doing this anymore. I am not going to lose you and I'm not going to sit by and wait for someone to tell me you're dead. It's not your job. I want you here, with me."

"Carly…" Sam began as she tried to think of a way to say what she had to say. "I have to go…"

"No, you really don't." Carly crossed her arms over her chest, never a good sign. "You have a choice. Either you are staying here, with me, or –"

A pair of Converse runners came flying from the darkness of the house a moment before her mom appeared. "You'll need these, hell spawn." And then to Carly: "And you, Miss Prissy, I think it's time that you and I have a talk about what it means to be a Puckett."

Carly pouted. "I'm not prissy…"

Pam thought that the shorter brunette was a bit touchy about being called 'prissy' and easilly distracted. She put her arm around Carly's shoulder to guide her inside the house, casting a glance over her shoulder: "You still here?"

With that, Sam was gone into the darkness of the early morning and Carly felt a sudden pang of regret in her stomach that she allowed her to go. She looked up at Pam, the older and taller version of her love.

"What if she doesn't come back this time?"

Pam shrugged. "Meh… I got another one."


	25. You Cluck Like A Hen

"You cluck like a hen."

Pam came into the rather worn living room of her rented house carrying two mugs in her hands. From one came whisps of steam. The other had been cooled down by a touch or three of rum. She made her way over to the orange and brown vintage couch and sat down next to her daughter's lover. Pam handed the steamy mug of Chai Tea over to Carly and sat back deeper into the cushions of the coach as she regarded the look of confusion and indignation on Carly's face.

"I don't cluck… I'm not a…" Carly tumbled over her words, slightly flustered by Pam's statement, so absolutely delivered. Trying to recover and assert herself, she finally said: "What do you mean by that?"

Pam gave a small smile and chuckled inside. So easily ruffled, she wondered how this little brunette had survived against her daughter's verbal sparring. But, then again, maybe Carly was the one exclusively saved from such vocal jabs.

"I mean, don't nag Sam. If you want to keep her in your life, you have to let her be the free spirit she is. She'll do whatever you ask her and if you give her an ultimatum she will always choose you. But, she will grow to resent the chains you place on her.

Carly looked down into her tea as if the dark ginger scented liquid would provide to her the wisdom of the ages. "I worry," was all she could say.

"Too much," Pam gave back with a slight chuckle and snort.

Carly shot the older woman a sidelong glance. "Like you don't?"

Pam shrugged and poured half her rum coffee down her throat, feeling the sting and burn as it passed through the long channel to her belly. "I stopped worrying about my daughter when she met you years ago."

That made the young brunette turn her head to face Pam with wide eyes. "Me? Why? We were just friends…"

"You were never _just _friends," Pam said quietly. "You changed her. From the moment you first met, you changed Sam. She was lost until you came into her life. You gave her balance."

"Balance?" Carly echoed, unsure if she understood. Or maybe she understood too well.

"What are you? A parrot?"

Carly frowned: "Parrot?"

Pam got up from the couch and headed back to the kitchen. "Here, let me get you a cracker… Polly…"


End file.
